him it had failed in the rendezvous before Witepsk, as if it had been an affair of a duel.  It was a panic-struck army, which his light cavalry alone was sufficient to put to flight.”  This ebullition extorted a smile from Napoleon; but in order to moderate his fervour, he said to him, “Murat! the first campaign in Russia is finished; let us here plant our eagles.  Two great rivers mark out our position; let us raise block-houses on that line; let our fires cross each other on all sides; let us form in square battalion; cannons at the angles and the exterior; let the interior contain our quarters and our magazines:  1813 will see us at Moscow—­1814 at Petersburgh.  The Russian war is a war of three years!”

It was thus that his genius conceived every thing in masses, and his eye expatiated over an army of 400,000 men as if it were a regiment.

That very day he loudly addressed an administrator in the following words:  “As for you, sir, you must take care to provide subsistence for us in these quarters; for,” added he, in a loud voice, and addressing himself to some of his officers, “we shall not repeat the folly of Charles the Twelfth.”  But his actions in a short time belied his words; and there was a general astonishment at his indifference to giving the necessary orders for so great an establishment.  To the left no instructions were sent to Macdonald, nor was he supplied with the means of obtaining possession of Riga.  To the right, it was Bobruisk which it was necessary to capture; this fortress stands in the midst of an extensive and deep marsh; and it was to a body of cavalry that the task of besieging it was committed.

Napoleon, in former times, scarcely ever gave orders without the possibility of being obeyed; but the prodigies of the war of Prussia had since occurred, and from that time the idea of impossibility was not admitted.  His orders were always, that every thing must be attempted, because up to that time every thing had succeeded.  This at first gave birth to great exertions, all of which, however, were not equally fortunate.  Persons got discouraged; but their chief persevered; he had become accustomed to command every thing; those whom he commanded got accustomed not to execute every thing.

Meantime Dombrowski was left before that fortress with his Polish division, which Napoleon stated at 8000 men, although he knew very well that it did not at that time amount to more than 1200; but such was his custom; either because he calculated on his words being repeated, and that they would deceive the enemy; or that he wished, by this exaggerated estimate, to make his generals feel all that he expected from them.

Witepsk remained for survey.  From the windows of its houses the eye looked down perpendicularly into the Duena, or to the very bottom of the precipices by which its walls are surrounded.  In these countries the snow remains long upon the ground; it filters through its least solid parts, which it penetrates to a great depth, and which it dilutes and breaks down.  Hence those deep and unexpected ravines, which no declination of the soil gives reason to foresee, which are imperceptible at some paces from their edge, and which on those vast plains surprised and suddenly arrested the charges of cavalry.