sides the slain and the
wounded. The remainder with difficulty effected their escape to Liady,
where Napoleon once more received them, and crossed the Dnieper.

Ney, meanwhile, having in execution of his master's parting injunctions
blown up whatever remained of the walls and towers of Smolensko, at
length set his rear-guard in motion, and advanced to Krasnoi, without
being harassed by any except Platoff, whose Cossacks entered Smolensko
ere he could wholly abandon it. The field strewn with many thousand
corpses, informed him sufficiently that a new disaster had befallen the
fated army. Yet he continued to advance on the footsteps of those who
had thus shattered Davoust and Mortier, and met with no considerable
interruption until he reached the ravine in which the rivulet Losmina
has its channel. A thick mist lay on the ground, and Ney was almost on
the brink of the ravine, before he perceived that it was manned
throughout by Russians, while the opposite banks displayed a long line
of batteries deliberately arranged, and all the hills behind were
covered with troops.

A Russian officer appeared and summoned Ney to capitulate. "A mareschal
of France never surrenders," was his intrepid answer; and immediately
the batteries, distant only 250 yards, opened a tremendous storm of
grape shot. Ney, nevertheless, had the hardihood to plunge into the
ravine, clear a passage over the stream, and charge the Russians at
their guns. His small band were repelled with fearful slaughter; but he
renewed his efforts from time to time during the day, and at night,
though with numbers much diminished, still occupied his original
position in the face of a whole army interposed between him and
Napoleon.

The Emperor had by this time given up all hope of ever again seeing
anything of his rear-column. But during the ensuing night, Ney effected
his escape; nor does the history of war present many such examples of
apparently insuperable difficulties overcome by the union of skill and
valour. The marshal broke up his bivouac at midnight, and marched back
from the Losmina, until he came on another stream, which he concluded
must flow also into the Dnieper. He followed this guide, and at length
reached the great river at the place where it was frozen over, though so
thinly, that the ice bent and crackled beneath the feet of the men, who
crossed it in single files. The waggons laden with the wounded, and what
great guns were still with Ney, were t