During this interval, a passage had been effected across the Boristhenes at several points; the roads to the two hostile capitals were reconnoitred to the distance of a league, and the Russian infantry was discovered in that leading to Moscow.  Ney would soon have overtaken it; but as that road skirted the Dnieper, he had to cross the streams which fall into it.  Each of them having scooped out its own bed, marked the bottom of a valley, the opposite side of which was a position where the enemy posted himself, and which it was necessary to carry:  the first, that of the Stubna, did not detain him long; but the hill of Valoutina, at the foot of which runs the Kolowdnia, became the scene of an obstinate conflict.

The cause of this resistance has been attributed to an ancient tradition of national glory, which represented this field of battle as ground consecrated by victory.  But this superstition, worthy even still of the Russian soldier, is far from the more enlightened patriotism of their generals.  It was necessity that here compelled them to fight:  we have seen that the Moscow road, on leaving Smolensk, skirted the Dnieper, and that the French artillery, on the other bank, traversed it with its fire.  Barclay durst not take this road at night, for fear of risking his artillery, baggage, and the waggons with the wounded, the rolling of which would have betrayed his retreat.

The Petersburgh road quitted the river more abruptly:  two marshy cross-roads branched off from it on the right, one at the distance of two leagues from Smolensk, the other at four; they ran through woods, and rejoined the high-road to Moscow, after a long circuit; the one at Bredichino, two leagues beyond Valoutina, the other farther off at Slobpnewa.

Into these defiles Barclay was bold enough to commit himself with so many horses and vehicles; so that this long and heavy column had thus to traverse two large arcs of a circle, of which the high-road from Smolensk to Moscow, which Ney soon attacked, was the chord.  Every moment, as always happens in such cases, the overturning of a carriage, the sticking fast of a wheel, or of a single horse, in the mud, or the breaking of a trace, stopped the whole.  The sound of the French cannon, meanwhile, drew nearer, and seemed to have already got before the Russian column, and to be on the point of reaching and closing the outlet which it was striving to gain.

At length, after an arduous march, the head of the enemy’s convoy came in sight of the high-road at the moment when the French had only to force the height of Valoutina and the passage of Kolowdnia, in order to reach that outlet.  Ney had furiously carried that of the Stubna; but Korf, driven back upon Valoutina, had summoned to his aid the column which preceded him.  It is asserted that the latter, without order, and badly officered, hesitated to comply; but that Woronzof, aware of the importance of that position, prevailed upon its commander to turn back.