At daybreak he passed the Louja with a few attendants, for the purpose of reconnoitring Kutusoff’s position.  He had scarcely crossed the bridge, when a party of Platoff’s Cossacks, galloping furiously, and sweeping some scattered companies of the French before them, came full upon the Emperor and his suite.  Napoleon was urged to seek safety in flight; but he drew his sword and took post on the bank by the way-side.  The wild spearmen, intent on booty, plunged on immediately below him, and, after stripping some soldiers, retired again at full speed to their Pulk, without having observed the inestimable prize.  The Emperor watched their retreat, and continued his reconnaissance.  It satisfied him that Davoust had judged rightly.

He made another effort to force a passage southwards at Medyn; but here also he was repelled, and forced to abandon the attempt.  Meantime the army which had occupied Moscow begun to send forth its Cossacks on his rear.  In a word, it became apparent that if the retreat were to be urged, it must now be in the direction of Verreia and Smolensko; that is, through the same provinces which had been entirely wasted in the earlier part of the campaign.

Kutusoff, whether merely overpowered for the moment with that vague sentiment which Buonaparte’s name had hitherto been accustomed to inspire, or that he knew of a still better position nearer Kalouga, was, in fact, retiring from his strong ground behind Malo-Yaraslovetz, at the moment when the French began to break up from the Louja.  No sooner, however, was that movement known, than the Russian penetrated the extent of his adversary’s embarrassments; and Platoff, with the Cossacks, received orders to hang close on the French rear—­while Milarodowitch, with 18,000 men, pushed directly on Viasma; and the main army taking a parallel, and a shorter, though less practicable route, marched also with the view of watching the retreat on Smolensko.

As Buonaparte was about to leave Verreia, General Witzingerode was brought a prisoner into his presence.  This officer had advanced to the Kremlin, ere it was abandoned, with a flag of truce, for the purpose of entering into some arrangements concerning the French wounded; and it is to be supposed, of dissuading the departing garrison from destroying the citadel.  He was, however, placed instantly under arrest, and hurried away with the enemy’s march.  Napoleon, whose temper was by this time embittered into ungovernable rage, charged the General with being the leader of the Cossacks, and threatened to have him shot, on the instant, as a brigand.  Witzingerode replied, that “he commanded not the Cossacks, but a part of the regular army; and that, in the character of a Russian soldier, he was at all times prepared for a French bullet.”  Napoleon, now ascertaining the name, country, and rank of his prisoner, pursued in these angry ejaculations:  “Who are you?  A man without a country—­You have ever been my enemy—­You were in the Austrian’s