Then at last Davoust made his appearance, forcing his way through a swarm of Cossacks, whom he drove away by a precipitate march.  At the sight of Krasnoe, this marshal’s troops disbanded themselves, and ran across the fields to get beyond the right of the enemy’s line, in the rear of which they had come up.  Davoust and his generals could only rally them at Krasnoe.

The first corps was thus preserved, but we learned at the same time, that our rear-guard could no longer defend itself at Krasnoe; that Ney was probably still at Smolensk, and that we must give up waiting for him any longer.  Napoleon, however, still hesitated; he could not determine on making this great sacrifice.

But at last, as all were likely to perish, his resolution was fixed.  He called Mortier, and squeezing his hand sorrowfully, told him, “that he had not a moment to lose; that the enemy were overwhelming him in all directions; that Kutusoff might already reach Liady, perhaps Orcha, and the last winding of the Boristhenes before him; that he would therefore proceed thither rapidly with his old guard, in order to occupy that passage.  Davoust would relieve Mortier; but both of them must endeavour to hold out in Krasnoe until night, after which they must come and rejoin him.”  Then with his heart full of Ney’s misfortune, and of despair at abandoning him, he withdrew slowly from the field of battle, traversed Krasnoe, where he again halted, and then cleared his way to Liady.

Mortier was anxious to obey, but at that moment the Dutch troops of the guard had lost, along with a third part of their number, an important post which they were defending, which the enemy immediately after covered with his artillery.  Roguet, feeling the destructive effects of its fire, fancied he was able to extinguish it.  A regiment which he sent against the Russian battery was repulsed; a second (the 1st of the voltigeurs) got into the middle of the Russians, and stood firm against two charges of their cavalry.  It continued to advance, torn to pieces by their grape-shot, when a third charge overwhelmed it.  Fifty soldiers and eleven officers were all of it that Roguet was able to preserve.

That general had lost the half of his men.  It was now two o’clock, and his unshaken fortitude still kept the Russians in astonishment, when at last, emboldened by the Emperor’s departure, they began to press upon him so closely, that the young guard was nearly hemmed in, and very soon in a situation in which it could neither hold out, nor retreat.

Fortunately, some platoons which Davoust had rallied, and the appearance of another troop of his stragglers, attracted the enemy’s attention.  Mortier availed himself of it.  He gave orders to the three thousand men he had still remaining to retreat slowly in the face of their fifty thousand enemies.  “Do you hear, soldiers?” cried General Laborde, “the marshal orders ordinary time!  Ordinary time, soldiers!” And this brave and unfortunate troop, dragging with them some of their wounded, under a shower of balls and grape-shot, retired as slowly from this field of carnage, as they would have done from a field of manoeuvre.