We at last reached Smolensk on the 9th, and the Emperor lodged in a beautiful house on the Place Neuve.  Although this important city had suffered since we had passed through before, it still had some resources, and we found there provisions of all kinds for the Emperor’s household and the officers; but the Emperor valued but little this privileged abundance, so to speak, when he learned that the army needed food for man and beast.  When he learned of this his rage amounted to frenzy, and I have never seen him so completely beside himself.  He had the commissary in charge of the provisions summoned, and reproached him in such unmeasured terms that the latter turned pale, and could find no words to justify himself, whereupon the Emperor became still more violent, and uttered terrible threats.  I heard cries from the next room; and I have been told since that the quartermaster threw himself at the feet of his Majesty, beseeching pardon, and the Emperor, when his rage had spent itself, pardoned him.  Never did he sympathize more truly with the sufferings of his army; never did he suffer more bitterly from his powerlessness to struggle against such overwhelming misfortunes.

On the 14th we resumed the route which we had traversed a few months before under far different auspices.  The thermometer registered twenty degrees, and we were still very far from France.  After a slow and painful march we arrived at Krasnoi.  The Emperor was obliged to go in person, with his guard, to meet the enemy, and release the Prince of Eckmuhl.  He passed through the fire of the enemy, surrounded by his old guard, who pressed around their chief in platoons in which the shell made large gaps, furnishing one of the grandest examples in all history of the devotion and love of thousands of men to one.  When the fire was hottest, the band played the air, ’Where can one be better than in the bosom of his family?’ Napoleon interrupted them, exclaiming, “Play rather, ’Let us watch over the safety of the Empire.’” It is difficult to imagine anything grander.

The Emperor returned from this combat much fatigued.  He had passed several nights without sleeping, listening to the reports made to him on the condition of the army, expediting orders necessary to procure food for the soldiers, and putting in motion the different corps which were to sustain the retreat.  Never did his stupendous activity find more constant employment; never did he show a higher courage than in the midst of all these calamities of which he seemed to feel the weighty responsibility.

Between Orcha and the Borysthenes those conveyances for which there were no longer horses were burned, and the confusion and discouragement became so great that in the rear of the army most of the stragglers threw down their arms as a heavy and useless burden.  The officers of the armed police had orders to return by force those who abandoned their corps, and often they were obliged to prick them with their swords to