oked
the whole. It seemed as though Death had here fixed his throne.
Presently the cry was heard, "It is the field of the great battle!"
forming a long and doleful murmur. The emperor passed quickly by. No one
stopped. Cold, hunger, and the enemy were urging us on: we merely turned
our faces as we marched along to take a last melancholy look at the vast
grave of so many companions in arms, uselessly sacrificed, and whose
remains we were obliged to leave behind, unheeded and uninterred.

Sec. 13. Napoleon reaches Viazma. Battle near that place.

At length the emperor reached Viazma.[168] He here halted to wait for
Prince Eugene and Davoust, and to reconnoitre the road to Medyn and
Yucknow, which at this place unites with the high road to Smolensk. It
was this cross-road which might possibly bring the Russian army from
Malo-jaroslavetz on his passage. But on the first of November, after
waiting thirty-six hours and seeing no indications of that army, he
again set out, wavering between the hope that Kutusoff had fallen
asleep, and the fear lest he might have left Viazma on his right, and
proceeded two marches farther to cut off his retreat. He left Ney,
however, at Viazma to collect the first and fourth corps, and to
relieve, by forming the rear guard, Davoust, whom he judged to be
fatigued.

He complained of the tardiness of the latter, and wrote to reproach him
with being still five marches behind, when he ought to have been no more
than three: the genius of that marshal he considered too methodical to
direct, in a suitable manner, so irregular a march.

But this delay was accounted for by the fact that Davoust had found a
marsh without a bridge, and completely encumbered with wagons. He had
dragged them out of the slough in sight of the enemy, and so near them
that their fires lighted his labors, and the sound of their drums
mingled with that of his own voice. For the marshal and his generals
could not yet resolve on abandoning to the enemy so many trophies; nor
did they make up their minds to it until after fruitless exertions, and
in the last extremity.

The road they were traversing was crossed at short intervals by marshy
hollows. A slope, slippery as glass with the ice, hurried the carriages
into them, and there they stuck fast: to draw them out it was necessary
to climb on the opposite side a similar slope, where the horses, whose
shoes were worn entirely smooth, could obtain no footing, and where
every mo