The Emperor made fruitless attempts to check this discouragement.  When alone, he was heard compassionating the sufferings of his soldiers; but in their presence, even upon that point, he wished to appear inflexible.  He issued a proclamation, “ordering every one to return to their ranks; if they did not, he would strip the officers of their grades, and put the soldiers to death.”

A threat like this produced neither good nor bad impression upon men who had become insensible, or were reduced to despair, fleeing not from danger, but from suffering, and less apprehensive of the death with which they were threatened than of the life that was offered to them.

But Napoleon’s confidence increased with his peril; in his eyes, and in the midst of these deserts of mud and ice, this handful of men was still the grand army! and himself the conqueror of Europe! and there was no infatuation in this firmness; we were certain of it, when, in this very town, we saw him burning with his own hands every thing belonging to him, which might serve as trophies to the enemy, in the event of his fall.

There also were unfortunately consumed all the papers which he had collected in order to write the history of his life, for such was his intention when he set out for this fatal war.  He had then determined to halt as a threatening conqueror on the borders of the Duena and the Boristhenes, to which he now returned as a disarmed fugitive.  At that time he regarded the ennui of six winter months, which he would have been detained on these rivers, as his greatest enemy, and to overcome it, this second Caesar intended there to have dictated his Commentaries.

CHAP.  VII.

Every thing, however, was now changed; two hostile armies were cutting off his retreat.  The question to decide was, through which of them he must attempt to force his way:  and as he knew nothing of the Lithuanian forests into which he was about to penetrate, he summoned such of his officers as had passed through them in order to reach him.

The Emperor began by telling them, that “Too much familiarity with great victories was frequently the precursor of great disasters, but that recrimination was now out of the question.”  He then mentioned the capture of Minsk, and after admitting the skilfulness of Kutusoff’s persevering manoeuvres on his right flank, declared “that he meant to abandon his line of operations on the Minsk, unite with the Dukes of Belluno and Reggio, cut his way through Wittgenstein’s army, and regain Wilna by turning the sources of the Berezina.”

Jomini combated this plan.  That Swiss general described the position of Wittgenstein as a series of long defiles, in which his resistance might be either obstinate or flexible, but in either way sufficiently long to consummate our destruction.  He added, that in this season, and in such a state of disorder, a change of route would complete the destruction of the army; that it would lose itself in the cross-roads of these barren and marshy forests; he maintained that the high road alone could keep it in any degree of union.  Borizof, and its bridge over the Berezina, were still open; and it would be sufficient to reach it.