men, persuaded
that he would easily reach friendly Lithuania and his winter quarters
"before severe cold set in." The veil was rudely torn from his eyes
when, south of Malo-Jaroslavitz, his Marshals found the Russians so
strongly posted that any further attack seemed to be an act of folly.
Eugene's corps had suffered cruelly in an obstinate fight in and
around that town, and the advice of Berthier, Murat, and Bessieres was
against its renewal. For an hour or more the Emperor sat silently
gazing at a map. The only prudent course now left was to retreat north
and then west by way of Borodino, _over his devastated line of
advance_.[273] Back, then, towards Borodino the army mournfully
trudged (October 26th):

"Everywhere (says Labaume) we saw wagons abandoned for want of
horses to draw them. Those who bore along with them the spoils of
Moscow trembled for their riches; but we were disquieted most of
all at seeing the deplorable state of our cavalry. The villages
which had but lately given us shelter were level with the ground:
under their ashes were the bodies of hundreds of soldiers and
peasants.... But most horrible was the field of Borodino, where we
saw the forty thousand men, who had perished there, yet lying
unburied."

For a time, Kutusoff forbore to attack the sore-stricken host; but,
early in November, the Russian horse began to infest the line of
march, and at Viasma their gathering forces were barely held off: had
Kutusoff aided his lieutenants, he might have decimated his famished
foes.

Hitherto the weather had been singularly mild and open, so much so
that the superstitious peasants looked on it as a sign that God was
favouring Napoleon. But, at last, on November the 6th, the first storm
of winter fell on the straggling array, and completed its miseries.
The icy blasts struck death to the hearts of the feeble; and the puny
fighting of man against man was now merged in the awful struggle
against the powers of the air. Drifts of snow blotted out the
landscape; the wandering columns often lost the road and thousands
forthwith ended their miseries. Except among the Old Guard all
semblance of military order was now lost, and battalions melted away
into groups of marauders.

The search for food and fuel became furious, even when the rigour of
the cold abated. The behaviour of Bourgogne, a sergeant in the
Imperial Guard, may serve to show by what shifts a hardy masterful
n