lves; it is necessary for
us; it will give us abundance, good winter-quarters, and a speedy return
home! Behave as you did at Austerlitz, at Friedland, at Witepsk, and at
Smolensk, and afford to remotest posterity occasion to cite your conduct
on that day: let it be said of you, 'He was in that great battle under
the walls of Moscow.'"

CHAP. VIII.

About the middle of the day, Napoleon remarked an extraordinary movement
in the enemy's camp; in fact, the whole Russian army was drawn up and
under arms, and Kutusof, surrounded with every species of religious and
military pomp, took his station in the middle of it. He had made his
popes and his archimandrites dress themselves in those splendid and
majestic insignia, which they have inherited from the Greeks. They
marched before him, carrying the venerated symbols of their religion,
and particularly that divine image, formerly the protectress of
Smolensk, which, by their account, had been miraculously saved from the
profanation of the sacrilegious French.

When the Russian saw that his soldiers were sufficiently excited by this
extraordinary spectacle, he raised his voice, and began by putting them
in mind of heaven, the only country which remains to the slave. In the
name of the religion of equality, he endeavoured to animate these serfs
to defend the property of their masters; but it was principally by
exhibiting to them that holy image which had taken refuge in their
ranks, that he appealed to their courage, and raised their indignation.

Napoleon, in his mouth, "was a universal despot! the tyrannical
disturber of the world! a poor worm! an arch-rebel, who had overturned
their altars, and polluted them with blood; who had exposed the true
ark of the Lord, represented by the holy image, to the profanation of
men, and the inclemency of the seasons." He then told them of their
cities reduced to ashes; reminded them that they were about to fight for
their wives and children; added a few words respecting the emperor, and
concluded by appealing to their piety and their patriotism. These were
the virtues of instinct with this rude and simple people, who had not
yet advanced beyond sensations, but who, for that very reason, were so
much more formidable as soldiers; less diverted from obedience by
reasoning; confined by slavery to a narrow circle, in which they are
reduced to a small number of sensations, which are the only sources of
their wants, wishes, and ideas.