regular contributions.

For it was only by excursions on the flanks and into an unknown country
that any provisions could be procured. Every evening, when the army
halted, and the bivouacs were established, detachments, rarely commanded
by divisions, sometimes by brigades, and most commonly by regiments,
went in quest of necessaries, and penetrated into the country; a few
wersts from the road they found all the villages inhabited, and were not
very hostilely received; but as they could not make themselves
understood, and besides wanted every thing, and that instantaneously,
the peasants were soon seized with a panic and fled into the woods,
whence they issued again as no very formidable partizans.

The detachments meanwhile plentifully regaled themselves, and rejoined
their corps next day or some days afterwards, laden with all that they
had collected; and it frequently happened that they were plundered in
their turn by their comrades belonging to the other corps whom they
chanced to fall in with. Hence animosities, which would have infallibly
led to most sanguinary intestine conflicts, had not all been
subsequently overtaken by the same misfortune, and involved in the
horrors of a common disaster.

Till the return of their detachments, the soldiers who remained with
their eagles lived on what they could find on the military route; in
general it consisted of new rye, which they bruised and boiled. Owing to
the cattle which followed, there was less want of meat than of bread;
but the length, and especially the rapidity of the marches, occasioned
the loss of many of these animals: they were suffocated by the heat and
dust; when, therefore, they came to water, they ran into it with such
fury, that many of them were drowned, while others drank so
immoderately, as to swell themselves out till they were unable to walk.

It was remarked, as before we reached Smolensk, that the divisions of
the first corps continued to be the most numerous; their detachments,
better disciplined, brought back more, and did less injury to the
inhabitants. Those who remained with their colours lived on the contents
of their knapsacks, the regular appearance of which relieved the eye,
fatigued with a disorder that was nearly universal.

Each of these knapsacks, reduced to what was strictly necessary in point
of apparel, contained two shirts, two pair of shoes with nails, and a
pair of extra soles, a pair of pantaloons and half-gaiters of cloth