In this instance, however, he had another motive.  His security was but affected:  for it was evident that the Russian army was taking the Medyn road, the very one which Davoust had recommended for the French army:  and Davoust, either from vanity or inadvertence, had not confided this alarming intelligence to his dispatch alone.  Napoleon feared its effects on his troops, and therefore affected to disbelieve and to despise it; but at the same time he gave orders that his guard should march next day in all haste, and so long as it should be light, as far as Gjatz.  Here he proposed to afford rest and provisions to this flower of his army, to ascertain, so much nearer, the direction of Kutusoff’s march, and to be beforehand with him at that point.

But he had not consulted the season, which seemed to avenge the slight.  Winter was so near at hand, that a blast of a few minutes was sufficient to bring it on, sharp, biting, intense.  We were immediately sensible that it was indigenous to this country, and that we were strangers in it.  Every thing was altered:  roads, faces, courage:  the army became sullen, the march toilsome, and consternation began.

Some leagues from Mojaisk, we had to cross the Kologa.  It was but a large rivulet; two trees, the same number of props, and a few planks were sufficient to ensure the passage:  but such was the confusion and inattention, that the Emperor was detained there.  Several pieces of cannon, which it was attempted to get across by fording, were lost.  It seemed as if each corps d’armee was marching separately as if there was no staff, no general order, no common tie, nothing that bound these corps together.  In reality the elevation of each of their chiefs rendered them too independent of one another.  The Emperor himself had become so exceedingly great, that he was at an immeasurable distance from the details of his army; and Berthier, holding an intermediate place between him and officers, who were all kings, princes, or marshals, was obliged to act with a great deal of caution.  He was besides wholly incompetent to the situation.

The Emperor, stopped by the trifling obstacle of a broken bridge, confined himself to a gesture expressive of dissatisfaction and contempt; to which Berthier replied only by a look of resignation.  On this particular point he had received no orders from the Emperor:  he therefore conceived that he was not to blame; for Berthier was a faithful echo, a mirror, and nothing more.  Always ready, clear and distinct, he reflected, he repeated the Emperor, but added nothing, and what Napoleon forgot was forgotten without retrieve.

After passing the Kologa, we marched on, absorbed in thought, when some of us, raising our eyes, uttered an exclamation of horror.  Each instantly looked around him, and beheld a plain trampled, bare and devastated, all the trees cut down within a few feet from the surface, and farther off craggy hills, the highest of which appeared to be the most misshapen.  It had all the appearance of an extinguished and destroyed volcano.  The ground was covered all around with fragments of helmets and cuirasses, broken drums, gun-stocks, tatters of uniforms, and standards dyed with blood.