ible to march to another battle, to fresh conquests,
without exposing a line of operation covered with sick, stragglers,
wounded, and convoys of all sorts? Moscow was the general rallying
point: how could it be changed? What other name would have any
attraction?

Lastly, and above all, how could he relinquish a hope to which he had
made so many sacrifices, when he knew that his letter to Alexander had
just passed the Russian advanced posts; when eight days would be
sufficient for receiving an answer, so ardently desired; when he
required that time to rally and reorganize his army, to collect the
relics of Moscow, the conflagration of which had but too strongly
sanctioned pillage, and to draw his soldiers away from that vast
infirmary.

Meanwhile, scarcely a third of that army and of that capital now
existed. But himself and the Kremlin were still standing: his renown was
still entire, and he persuaded himself that those two great names,
Napoleon and Moscow, combined, would be sufficient to accomplish
everything. He determined, therefore, to return to the Kremlin, which a
battalion of his guard had unfortunately preserved.

Sec. 7. Napoleon returns to the Kremlin; plunder of the city.

The camps which he traversed on his way thither presented an
extraordinary sight. In the fields, in the midst of the mud, were large
fires, kept up with mahogany furniture, windows and gilded doors. Around
these fires, on litters of damp straw, imperfectly sheltered by a few
boards, were seen the soldiers and their officers, splashed all over
with mud, and blackened with smoke, seated in arm-chairs or reclining on
silken couches. At their feet were spread, or heaped together, Cashmere
shawls, the rarest furs of Siberia, the gold stuffs of Persia, and
silver dishes, off which they had nothing to eat but black dough baked
in the ashes, and half broiled and bloody horseflesh. Strange
combination of abundance and want, of riches and filth, of luxury and
wretchedness!

Between the camp and the city were met troops of soldiers dragging along
their booty, or driving before them, like beasts of burden, Muscovites
bending under the weight of the pillage of their capital: for the fire
brought to light nearly twenty thousand inhabitants, previously
concealed in that immense city. Some of these, of both sexes, were well
dressed: they were tradespeople. They came with the wreck of their
property, to seek refuge at our fires. They lived pell-mel