de they had assumed; and upon his leaving to rejoin
the army the Emperor directed him to repeat in the most formal manner
his declaration that he would not enter into or permit any negotiations
with Napoleon; and added that he would sooner let his beard grow to his
waist, and eat potatoes in Siberia.

Frank had been active during the battle of Loubino. Sir Robert Wilson
had taken up his post with Touchkoff during the action which was so
desperately fought to cover the retreat of the main army, and Frank had
acted as aide-de-camp, and, having carried orders to various parts of
the field, had excellent opportunities of seeing the whole of the
battle; and the Russian general in making his report of the engagement
had mentioned his name among those who had rendered distinguished
services. His horse had been shot under him, his cap had been carried
away by a bullet, and he had received a slight flesh wound in his leg.
Although this was of small consequence, it had caused the insertion of
his name among those of the officers wounded in the battle. He was to
see no more fighting for a time; for, although the army of Wittgenstein
fought two or three severe actions with the divisions of St. Cyr and
Oudinot, the main army fell back without again fighting until it took up
the position that Marshal Kutusow had selected for giving battle.

CHAPTER XII

BORODINO

Barbarously as the French army behaved on its advance to Smolensk,
things were even worse as they left the ruined town behind them and
resumed their journey towards Moscow. It seemed that the hatred with
which they were regarded by the Russian peasantry was now even more than
reciprocated. The destruction they committed was wanton and wholesale;
the villages, and even the towns, were burnt down, and the whole country
made desolate. It was nothing to them that by so doing they added
enormously to the difficulties of their own commissariat; nothing that
they were destroying the places where they might otherwise have found
shelter on their return. They seemed to destroy simply for the sake of
destruction, and to be animated by a burning feeling of hatred for the
country they had invaded.

Since the days of the thirty years' war in Germany, never had war been
carried on in Europe so mercilessly and so destructively. As he saw the
ruined homes or passed the bodies of peasants wantonly shot down, Julian
Wyatt regretted bitterly that he had not been content to remain a