At last, after two hours most anxious march, they again reached the high road, and the viceroy was actually in Krasnoe on the 17th of November, when Miloradowitch, descending from his heights in order to seize him, found the field of battle occupied only by a few stragglers, whom no effort could induce the night before to quit their fires.

CHAP.  V.

The Emperor on his side had waited for the viceroy during the whole of the preceding day.  The noise of his engagement had irritated him.  An effort to break through the enemy, in order to join him, had been ineffectually attempted; and when night came on without his making his appearance, the uneasiness of his adopted father was at the height.  “Eugene and the army of Italy, and this long day of baffled expectation, had they then terminated together?” Only one hope remained to Napoleon; and that was, that the viceroy, driven back towards Smolensk, had there joined Davoust and Ney, and that the following day they would, with united forces, attempt a decisive effort.

In his anxiety, the Emperor assembled the marshals who remained with him.  These were Berthier, Bessieres, Mortier, and Lefebvre; these were saved; they had cleared the obstacle; they had only to continue their retreat through Lithuania, which was open to them; but would they abandon their companions in the midst of the Russian army?  No, certainly; and they determined once more to enter Russia, either to deliver, or to perish with them.

When this resolution was taken, Napoleon coolly prepared the dispositions to carry it into effect.  He was not at all shaken by the great movements which the enemy were evidently making around him.  He saw that Kutusoff was advancing in order to surround and take him prisoner in Krasnoe.  The very night before, he had learned that Ojarowski, with a vanguard of Russian infantry, had got beyond him, and taken a position at Maliewo, in a village in the rear of his left.  Irritated, instead of depressed, by misfortune, he called his aide-de-camp, Rapp, and exclaimed, “that he must set out immediately, and proceed during the night and the darkness to attack that body of infantry with the bayonet; that this was the first time of its exhibiting so much audacity, and that he was determined to make it repent it, in such a way, that it should never again dare to approach so near to his head-quarters.”  Then instantly recalling him, he continued, “But, no! let Roguet and his division go alone!  As for thee, remain where thou art, I don’t wish thee to be killed here, I shall have occasion for thee at Dantzic.”

Rapp, while he was carrying this order to Roguet, could not help feeling astonished, that his leader, surrounded by eighty thousand enemies, whom he was going to attack next day with nine thousand, should have so little doubt about his safety, as to be thinking of what he should have to do at Dantzic, a city from which he was separated by the winter, two other hostile armies, famine, and a hundred and eighty leagues.