In this prompt organization, adopted while marching, the army had accommodated itself to all the local customs and difficulties; the genius of the soldiers had admirably made the most of the scanty resources of the country.  As to the officers, as the general orders always took for granted regular distributions which were never made, each of them, according to the degree of his zeal, intelligence, and firmness, appropriated to himself more or less of this spoil, and had converted individual pillage into regular contributions.

For it was only by excursions on the flanks and into an unknown country that any provisions could be procured.  Every evening, when the army halted, and the bivouacs were established, detachments, rarely commanded by divisions, sometimes by brigades, and most commonly by regiments, went in quest of necessaries, and penetrated into the country; a few wersts from the road they found all the villages inhabited, and were not very hostilely received; but as they could not make themselves understood, and besides wanted every thing, and that instantaneously, the peasants were soon seized with a panic and fled into the woods, whence they issued again as no very formidable partizans.

The detachments meanwhile plentifully regaled themselves, and rejoined their corps next day or some days afterwards, laden with all that they had collected; and it frequently happened that they were plundered in their turn by their comrades belonging to the other corps whom they chanced to fall in with.  Hence animosities, which would have infallibly led to most sanguinary intestine conflicts, had not all been subsequently overtaken by the same misfortune, and involved in the horrors of a common disaster.

Till the return of their detachments, the soldiers who remained with their eagles lived on what they could find on the military route; in general it consisted of new rye, which they bruised and boiled.  Owing to the cattle which followed, there was less want of meat than of bread; but the length, and especially the rapidity of the marches, occasioned the loss of many of these animals:  they were suffocated by the heat and dust; when, therefore, they came to water, they ran into it with such fury, that many of them were drowned, while others drank so immoderately, as to swell themselves out till they were unable to walk.

It was remarked, as before we reached Smolensk, that the divisions of the first corps continued to be the most numerous; their detachments, better disciplined, brought back more, and did less injury to the inhabitants.  Those who remained with their colours lived on the contents of their knapsacks, the regular appearance of which relieved the eye, fatigued with a disorder that was nearly universal.

Each of these knapsacks, reduced to what was strictly necessary in point of apparel, contained two shirts, two pair of shoes with nails, and a pair of extra soles, a pair of pantaloons and half-gaiters of cloth; a few articles requisite to cleanliness, a bandage, and a quantity of lint, and sixty cartridges.