they succeeded.
These details transported Napoleon with joy. Credulous from hope,
perhaps from despair, he was for some moments dazzled by these
appearances: eager to escape from the inward feeling which oppressed
him, he seemed desirous to deaden it by resigning himself to an
expansive joy. He therefore summoned all his generals, and triumphantly
announced to them a speedy peace. "They had but to wait another
fortnight. None but himself was acquainted with the Russian character.
On the receipt of his letter St. Petersburg would be illuminated." But
the armistice[157] proposed by Kutusoff was so unsatisfactory to him,
that he ordered Murat to break it instantly; it nevertheless continued
to be observed, the cause of which is not known.

This armistice was a very singular one. If either party wished to break
it, three hours' notice was to be sufficient. It was confined to the
fronts of the two camps, but did not extend to their flanks: such, at
least, was the interpretation put upon it by the Russians. Thus, we
could not bring up a convoy, or send out a foraging party, without
fighting; so that the war continued everywhere excepting where it could
be favorable to us.

As for the emperor, who was not so easily deceived, he had but a few
moments of factitious joy. He soon complained "that an annoying warfare
of partisans[158] hovered around him; that, notwithstanding all these
pacific demonstrations, bodies of Cossacks were prowling on his flanks
and in his rear. Had not one hundred and fifty dragoons of his Old Guard
been surprised and routed by a number of these barbarians? And this two
days after the armistice, on the road to Mojaisk, on his line of
operation, that by which the army communicated with its magazines, its
reinforcements, and he himself with Europe?"

Our soldiers, and especially our cavalry, were obliged every morning to
go to a great distance in quest of provisions for the evening and for
the next day; and as the environs of Moscow and Vinkowo became gradually
more and more drained, they were daily compelled to extend their
excursions. Both men and horses returned worn out with fatigue, that is
to say, such of them as returned at all; for we had to fight for every
bushel of rye and for every truss of forage. It was a series of
incessant surprises and skirmishes, and of continual losses. The
peasantry took part in it. They punished with death such of their number
as the prospect of gain had allured to