our camp with provisions. Others
set fire to their own villages to drive our foragers out of them, and to
give them up to the Cossacks, whom they had previously summoned, and who
kept us there in a state of siege.

Thus the war was everywhere: in our front, on our flanks, and in our
rear. Our army was constantly weakening, and the enemy becoming daily
more enterprising. This conquest seemed destined to fare like many
others, which are won in the mass, and lost piece-meal.

Murat himself at length grew uneasy. In these daily skirmishes he had
seen half the remnant of his cavalry melted away. At the advanced posts,
the Russian officers, on meeting with ours, either from weariness,
vanity, or military frankness carried to indiscretion, exaggerated the
disasters which threatened us. Showing us those wild-looking horses,
scarcely at all broken in, whose long manes swept the dust of the plain,
they said, "Did not this tell us that a numerous cavalry was joining
them from all quarters, while ours was gradually perishing? Did not the
continual discharges of firearms within their line apprise us that a
multitude of recruits were then training under favor of the armistice?"

And, in fact, notwithstanding the long journeys which they had to make,
all these recruits joined the army. There was no occasion to defer
calling them together, as in other years, till deep snows, obstructing
all the roads excepting the high road, rendered their desertion
impossible. Not one failed to obey the national appeal; all Russia rose:
mothers, it was said, wept for joy on learning that their sons had been
selected for soldiers: they hastened to acquaint them with the glorious
intelligence, and even accompanied them to see them marked with the sign
of the Crusaders, to hear them cry, _'Tis the will of God!_

The Russian officers added "that they were particularly astonished at
our security on the approach of their frightful winter, which was their
natural and most formidable ally, and which they expected every moment:
they pitied us and urged us to fly. In a fortnight," said they, "your
nails will drop off, and your muskets will fall from your benumbed and
half-dead fingers."

The language of some of the Cossack chiefs was also remarkable. They
asked our officers "if they had not, in their own country, corn enough,
air enough, and graves enough: in short, room enough to live and die?
Why, then, did they come so far from home to throw away their l