ly, and without interruption. "What a disgrace
for Barclay, to have given up, without fighting, the key of old Russia!
and yet what a field of honour he had offered to him! how advantageous
it was for him! a fortified town to support and take part in his efforts!
the same town and a river to receive and cover the wreck of his
army, if defeated!

"And what would he have had to fight? an army, numerous indeed, but
straitened for want of room, and having nothing but precipices for its
retreat. It had given itself up, in a manner, to his blows. Barclay had
wanted nothing but resolution. It was therefore, all over with Russia.
She had no army but to witness the fall of her cities, and not to defend
them. For, in fact, on what more favourable ground could Barclay make a
stand? what position would he determine to dispute? he, who had forsaken
that Smolensk, called by him Smolensk the holy, Smolensk the strong, the
key of Moscow, the Bulwark of Russia, which, as it had been given out,
was to prove the grave of the French! We should presently see the effect
of this loss on the Russians; we should see their Lithuanian soldiers,
nay even those of Smolensk, deserting their ranks, indignant at the
surrender of their capital without a struggle."

Napoleon added, that "authentic reports had made him acquainted with the
weakness of the Russian divisions; that most of them were already much
reduced; that they suffered themselves to be destroyed in detail, and
that Alexander would soon cease to have an army. The rabble of peasants
armed with pikes, whom we had just seen in the train of their battalions,
sufficiently demonstrated to what shifts their generals were reduced."

While the emperor was thus talking, the balls of the Russian riflemen
were whizzing about his ears; but he was worked up by his subject. He
launched out against the enemy's general and army, as if he could have
destroyed it by his reasoning, because he could not by victory. No one
answered him; it was evident that he was not asking advice, but that he
had been talking all this time to himself; that he was contending
against his own reflections, and that, by this torrent of conjectures,
he was seeking to impose upon himself, and endeavouring to make others
participators in the same illusions.

Indeed, he did not give any one time to interrupt him. As to the
weakness and disorganization of the Russian army, nobody believed it;
but what could be urged in reply? He app