the fatal term assigned to their hopes.

Suddenly a Russian battery began firing. Their balls crossed the road.
The German corps became confused and made no attempt to meet this
attack. But a wounded officer who chanced to be there assumed the
command of the Germans, and the men obeyed him as if he had been their
rightful leader. On seeing this advanced column of Germans march forward
in such good order, the enemy confined himself to attacking it with his
artillery, which it disregarded and soon left behind. When it came to
the turn of the Old Guard to pass through this fire, they closed their
ranks around Napoleon like a movable fortress, proud of the honor of
protecting him. Their band of music expressed their satisfaction. When
the danger was greatest, it played the well-known air, "_Where can one
be happier than in the bosom of his family?_" But the emperor, whom
nothing escaped, stopped them with the exclamation, "Rather play, '_Let
us watch for the safety of the empire!_'" words much better suited to
the feelings which then occupied him, and to the general condition of
affairs.

At the same time, the enemy's fire becoming troublesome, he gave orders
to silence it, and in two hours he reached Krasnoe.

On the 17th, before daylight, Napoleon issued his orders, armed himself,
and going out on foot at the head of his Old Guard, began his march. But
it was not towards Poland, his ally, that he directed it, nor towards
France, where he would still be received as the head of a new dynasty,
and the Emperor of the West. His words on grasping his sword on this
occasion were, "I have sufficiently acted the emperor; it is time I
should become the general." He turned back upon eighty thousand of the
enemy, plunging into the thickest of them, in order to draw all their
efforts against himself, to make a diversion in favor of Davoust and
Ney, and to rescue them from a country, the gates of which were closed
against them.

Daylight at last appeared, exhibiting on the one part the Russian
battalions and batteries, which on three sides, in front, on our right,
and in our rear, bounded the horizon, and on the other Napoleon, with
his six thousand guards, advancing with a firm step, and proceeding to
take his place in the centre of that terrible circle. At the same time,
Mortier, a few yards in front of the emperor, deployed,[170] in the face
of the whole Russian army, with the five thousand men still remaining to
him.

Here, t