Respect, however, for the conqueror of Europe, and the necessity of circumstances, supported them in the midst of their numerous privations.  They saw that they were too deeply embarked; that a victory was necessary for their speedy deliverance; and that he alone could give it them.  Misfortune, moreover, had purified the army; all that remained of it could not fail to be its elite both in mind and body.  In order to have got so far as they had done, what trials had they not withstood!  Suspense, and disgust with miserable cantonments, were sufficient to agitate such men.  To remain, appeared to them insupportable; to retreat, impossible; it was, therefore, imperative to advance.

The great names of Smolensk and Moscow inspired no alarm.  In ordinary times, and with ordinary men, that unknown region, that unvisited people, and the distance which magnifies all things, would have been sufficient to discourage.  But these were the very circumstances which, in this case, were most attractive.  The soldiers’ chief pleasure was in hazardous situations, which were rendered more interesting by the greater proportion of danger they involved, and on which new dangers conferred a more striking air of singularity; emotions full of charm for active spirits, which had exhausted their taste for old things, and which, therefore, required new.

Ambition was, at that time, completely unshackled; every thing inspired the passion for glory; they had been launched into a boundless career.  How was it possible to measure the ascendancy, which a powerful emperor must have acquired, or the strong impulse which he had given them?—­an emperor, capable of telling his soldiers after the victory of Austerlitz, “I will allow you to name your children after me; and if among them there should prove one worthy of us, I will leave him every thing I possess, and name him my successor.”

CHAP.  III.

The junction of the two wings of the Russian army, in the direction of Smolensk, had compelled Napoleon also to approximate his various divisions.  No signal of attack had yet been given, but the war involved him on all sides; it seemed to tempt his genius by success, and to stimulate it by reverses.  On his left, Wittgenstein, equally in dread of Oudinot and Macdonald, remained between the two roads from Polotsk and Duenabourg, which meet at Sebez.  The Duke of Reggio’s orders had been to keep on the defensive.  But neither at Polotsk nor at Witepsk was there any thing found in the country, which disclosed the position of the Russians.  Tired of feeling nothing of them on any side, the marshal determined to go in quest of them himself.  On the 1st of August, therefore, he left general Merle and his division on the Drissa, to protect his baggage, his great park of artillery, and his retreat; he pushed Verdier towards Sebez, and made him take a position on the high-road, in order to mask the movement which he was meditating.  He himself, turning to the left with Legrand’s infantry, Castex’s cavalry, and Aubrey’s light artillery, advanced as far as Yakoubowo, on the road to Osweia.