ter, and, as Sergeant Bourgogne
remarks, if every house had been gutted there were still the caves and
cellars that promised protection from the cold of winter. The real
problem was now, as ever, the food-supply. The Russians had swept the
district wellnigh bare; and though the Grand Army feasted for a
fortnight on dainties and drink, yet bread, flour, and meat were soon
very scarce. In vain did the Emperor seek to entice the inhabitants
back; they knew the habits of the invaders only too well; and despite
several distant raids, which sometimes cost the French dear, the
soldiery began to suffer.

October wore on with delusive radiance, but brought no peace. Soon
after the great conflagration at Moscow, Napoleon sent secret and
alluring overtures to Alexander, offering to leave Russia a free hand
in regard to Turkey, inclusive of Constantinople, which he had
hitherto strictly reserved, and hinting that Polish affairs might also
be arranged to the Czar's liking.[269] But Alexander refused tamely to
accept the fruits of victory from the man who, he believed, had burnt
holy Moscow, and clung to his vow never to treat with his rival as
long as a single French soldier stood on Russian soil. His resolve
saved Europe. Yet it cost him much to defy the great conqueror to the
death: he had so far feared the capture of St. Petersburg as to
request that the Cronstadt fleet might be kept in safety in
England.[270] But gradually he came to see that the sacrifice of
Moscow had saved his empire and lured Napoleon to his doom. Kutusoff
also played a waiting game. Affecting a wish for peace, he was about
secretly to meet Napoleon's envoy, Lauriston, when the Russian
generals and our commissioner, Sir R. Wilson, intervened, and required
that it should be a public step. It seems likely, however, that
Kutusoff was only seeking to entrap the French into barren
negotiations; he knew that an answer could not come from the banks of
the Neva until winter began to steal over the northern steppes.

Slowly the truth begins to dawn on Napoleon that Moscow is not _the
heart of Russia_, as he had asserted to De Pradt that it was.
Gradually he sees that that primitive organism had no heart, that its
almost amorphous life was widespread through myriads of village
communes, vegetating apart from Moscow or Petersburg, and that his
march to the old capital was little more than a sword-slash through a
pond.[271] Had he set himself to study with his former