in's artillery filled it with its echoes. The Russian general
came rushing from the north upon the right flank of our expiring column,
and he brought back with him the winter which had quitted us at the
same time with Kutusoff. The news of his threatening march accelerated
our steps, and our motley array of from forty to fifty thousand men,
women, and children hurried through the forest as rapidly as their
weakness and the slipperiness of the ground, from the frost again
setting in, would allow.

These forced marches, commenced before daylight, and not terminating
until after its close, dispersed all who had previously been together.
They lost themselves in the double darkness of the forest and of the
night. They halted in the evening, and resumed their march in the
morning, in obscurity, at random, and without hearing the signal: the
dissolution of the remains of the corps was now completed; all were
mixed and confounded together.

In this last stage of helplessness and confusion, as we were approaching
Borizoff, we heard loud cries before us. Some rushed forward, fancying
it was an attack. It was Victor's army, which had been feebly driven
back by Wittgenstein to the right side of our road, where it remained
waiting for us. Still, quite complete and full of animation, it received
the emperor, as soon as he made his appearance, with the customary but
now long-forgotten acclamations.

Of our disasters it had heard nothing: they had been carefully concealed
even from its leaders. When, therefore, instead of that grand column
which had conquered Moscow, its soldiers perceived behind Napoleon only
a train of spectres covered with tattered vestments of every kind,
women's pelisses, pieces of carpet, or dirty cloaks, half burned and
riddled by the fires, and with nothing but rags on their feet, their
consternation was extreme. They seemed terrified at the sight of those
unfortunate soldiers, as they defiled before them, with emaciated
frames, faces black with dirt, and hideous bristly beards, unarmed,
shameless, marching confusedly, with their heads bent, and their eyes
fixed on the ground and silent, like a troop of captives.

But what astonished them more than all was to see the number of generals
and officers of every grade, scattered about and insulated, seemingly
only occupied about themselves, and thinking of nothing but to save the
wrecks of their property or their persons: they were marching pell-mell
with the so