CHAP.  VI.

As soon as Mortier had succeeded in placing Krasnoe between him and Beningsen, he was in safety.  The communication between that town and Liady was only interrupted by the fire of the enemy’s batteries, which flanked the left side of the great road.  Colbert and Latour-Maubourg kept them in check upon their heights.  In the course of this march a most singular accident occurred.  A howitzer shell entered the body of a horse, burst there, and blew him to pieces without wounding his rider, who fell upon his legs, and went on.

The Emperor, meanwhile, halted at Liady, four leagues from the field of battle.  When night came on, he learned that Mortier, who he thought was in his rear, had got before him.  Melancholy and uneasy, he sent for him, and with an agitated voice, said to him, “that he had certainly fought gloriously, and suffered greatly.  But why had he placed his Emperor between him and the enemy? why had he exposed himself to be cut off?”

The marshal had got the start of Napoleon without being aware of it.  He exclaimed, “that he had at first left Davoust in Krasnoe, again endeavouring to rally his troops, and that he himself had halted, not far from that:  but that the first corps, having been driven back upon him, had obliged him to retrograde.  That besides, Kutusoff did not follow up his victory with vigour, and appeared to hang upon our flank with all his army with no other view than to feast his eyes with our distress, and gather up our fragments.”

Next day the march was continued with hesitation.  The impatient stragglers took the lead, and all of them got the start of Napoleon; he was on foot, with a stick in his hand, walking with difficulty and repugnance, and halting every quarter of an hour, as if unwilling to tear himself from that old Russia, whose frontier he was then passing, and in which he had left his unfortunate companions in arms.

In the evening he reached Dombrowna, a wooden town, with a population like Liady; a novel sight for an army, which had for three months seen nothing but ruins.  We had at last emerged from old Russia and her deserts of snow and ashes, and entered into a friendly and inhabited country, whose language we understood.  The weather just then became milder, a thaw had begun, and we received some provisions.

Thus the winter, the enemy, solitude, and with some famine and bivouacs, all ceased at once; but it was too late.  The Emperor saw that his army was destroyed; every moment the name of Ney escaped from his lips, with exclamations of grief.  That night particularly he was heard groaning and exclaiming, “That the misery of his poor soldiers cut him to the heart, and yet that he could not succour them without fixing himself in some place:  but where was it possible for him to rest, without ammunition, provisions, or artillery?  He was no longer strong enough to halt; he must reach Minsk as quickly as possible.”