ertainty, without guides, and on an unknown track, within reach of
Kutusoff, presenting its flank to all the attacks of the enemy? Would
he, Davoust, defend it? When in our rear Borowsk and Vereia would lead
us without danger to Mojaisk, why reject that safe route? There
provisions must have been already collected, there everything was known
to us, and we could not be misled by any traitor."

At these words, Davoust, burning with a rage which he could scarcely
repress, replied that "he proposed a retreat through a fertile country,
by an untouched, plentiful, and well supplied route, where the villages
were still standing, and by the shortest road, that the enemy might not
be able to cut us off, as on the route by Mojaisk to Smolensk,
recommended by Murat. And what a route! a desert of sand and ashes,
where convoys of wounded would increase our embarrassment, where we
should meet with nothing but ruins, traces of blood, skeletons, and
famine!

"Moreover, though he deemed it his duty to give his opinion when it was
asked, he was ready to obey orders contrary to it with the same zeal as
if they were consonant with his suggestions; but that the emperor alone
had a right to impose silence on him, and not Murat, who was not his
sovereign, and never should be!"

The quarrel growing warm, Bessieres and Berthier interposed. As for the
emperor, still absorbed and in the same attitude, he appeared insensible
to what was passing. At length he broke up the council with the words,
"Well, gentlemen, I will decide."

He decided on retreat, and by that road which would carry him most
speedily to a distance from the enemy; but it required another desperate
effort before he could bring himself to give an order of march so new to
him. So painful, indeed, was this effort, that in the inward struggle
which it produced he lost the use of his senses.

It is a remarkable fact, that he issued orders for this retreat
northward at the very moment that Kutusoff and his Russians, dismayed at
their defeat at Malo-jaroslavetz, were retiring towards the south.

From that moment Napoleon had nothing in his view but Paris, just as on
leaving Paris he saw nothing but Moscow. It was on the 26th of October
that the fatal movement of our retreat commenced. Davoust, with
twenty-five thousand men, remained as a rear-guard. While by advancing a
few paces, without being aware of it, he was spreading consternation
among the Russians, the Grand Army, in asto