ly on the left.

The principal column, that of the centre, found nothing on a road where
its advanced guard itself had to subsist entirely on the leavings of the
Russians; it could not digress from its direction, for want of time, in
so rapid a march. Besides, the columns on the right and left consumed
every thing on either side of it. In order to live better, it ought to
have set out later every day, halted earlier, and then extended itself
more on its flanks during the night; which could be done without
imprudence when the enemy was so near at hand.

At Smolensk orders had been issued, as at Witepsk, to take, at starting,
provisions for several days. The emperor was aware of the difficulty of
collecting them, but he reckoned upon the diligence of the officers and
the troops; they had warning,--that was sufficient; they would contrive
to provide themselves with necessaries. They had acquired the habit of
doing so; and it was really a curious sight to observe the voluntary and
continual efforts of so many men to follow a single individual to such
great distances. The existence of the army was a prodigy that was daily
renewed, by the active, industrious, and intelligent spirit of the
French and Polish troops, by their habit of surmounting all
difficulties, and by their fondness for the hazards and irregularities
of this dreadful game of an adventurous life.

In the train of each regiment there were a multitude of those diminutive
horses with which Poland swarms, a great number of carts of the country,
which required to be incessantly replaced with fresh ones, and a drove
of cattle. The baggage-waggons were driven by soldiers, for they turned
their hands to every trade. They were missed in the ranks, it is true;
but here the want of provisions, the necessity for transporting every
thing with them, excused this prodigious train: it required a second
army, as it were, to carry or draw what was indispensable for the first.

In this prompt organization, adopted while marching, the army had
accommodated itself to all the local customs and difficulties; the
genius of the soldiers had admirably made the most of the scanty
resources of the country. As to the officers, as the general orders
always took for granted regular distributions which were never made,
each of them, according to the degree of his zeal, intelligence, and
firmness, appropriated to himself more or less of this spoil, and had
converted individual pillage into