While the emperor was thus talking, the balls of the Russian riflemen were whizzing about his ears; but he was worked up by his subject.  He launched out against the enemy’s general and army, as if he could have destroyed it by his reasoning, because he could not by victory.  No one answered him; it was evident that he was not asking advice, but that he had been talking all this time to himself; that he was contending against his own reflections, and that, by this torrent of conjectures, he was seeking to impose upon himself, and endeavouring to make others participators in the same illusions.

Indeed, he did not give any one time to interrupt him.  As to the weakness and disorganization of the Russian army, nobody believed it; but what could be urged in reply?  He appealed to positive documents, those which had been sent to him by Lauriston; they had been altered, under the idea of correcting them:  for the estimate of the Russian forces by Lauriston, the French minister in Russia, was correct; but, according to accounts less deserving of credit, though more flattering, this estimate had been diminished one-third.

After talking to himself for an hour, the emperor, looking at the heights on the right bank, which were nearly abandoned by the enemy, concluded with exclaiming, that “the Russians were women, and that they acknowledged themselves vanquished!” He strove to persuade himself that these people had, from their contact with Europe, lost their rude and savage valour.  But their preceding wars had instructed them, and they had arrived at that point, at which nations still possess all their primitive virtues, in addition to those they have acquired.

At length, he again mounted his horse.  It was then the Grand-marshal observed to one of us, that “if Barclay had committed so very great a blunder in refusing battle, the emperor would not have been so extremely anxious to convince us of it.”  A few paces farther, an officer, sent not long before to Prince Schwartzenberg, presented himself:  he reported that Tormasof and his army had appeared in the north, between Minsk and Warsaw, and that they had marched upon our line of operation.  A Saxon brigade taken at Kobrynn, the grand-duchy overrun, and Warsaw alarmed, had been the first results of this aggression; but Regnier had summoned Schwartzenberg to his aid.  Tormasof had then retreated to Gorodeczna, where he halted on the 12th of August, between two defiles, in a plain surrounded by woods and marshes, but accessible in the rear of his left flank.

Regnier, skilful before an action, and an excellent judge of ground, knew how to prepare battles; but when the field became animated, when it was covered with men and horses, he lost his self-possession, and rapid movements seemed to dazzle him.  At first, therefore, that general perceived at a glance the weak side of the Russians; he bore down upon it, but instead of breaking into it by masses and with impetuosity, he merely made successive attacks.