at as was its measure, it had gone beyond it.

Napoleon had been at Smolensk for five days. It was known that Ney had
received orders to arrive there as late as possible, and Eugene to halt
for two days at a point near Smolensk. Then it was not the necessity of
waiting for the army of Italy which detained him! To what, then, must we
attribute this delay, in the midst of famine, disease, and when the
winter and three hostile armies were gradually surrounding us?

The emperor no doubt fancied that by dating his despatches for five days
from that city, he would give to his disorderly flight the appearance of
a slow and glorious retreat. In the same spirit, no doubt, he had
ordered the destruction of the towers which surrounded Smolensk, from
the wish, as he expressed it, of not being again stopped short by its
walls! as if there were any idea of our returning to a place which we
were not even sure that we should ever get out of.

The emperor, however, made an effort that was not altogether fruitless.
This was to rally under one commander all that remained of the cavalry;
when it was found that of this force, thirty-seven thousand strong at
the passage of the Niemen, there now remained only eight hundred men on
horseback. He gave the command of these to Latour-Maubourg; and, whether
from the esteem felt for him, or from the general indifference, no one
objected to it.

This army, which left Moscow one hundred thousand strong, in
five-and-twenty days had been reduced to thirty-six thousand men, while
the artillery had lost three hundred and fifty of their cannon; and yet
these feeble remains continued as before to be divided into eight
armies, which were encumbered with sixty thousand unarmed stragglers,
and a long train of cannon and baggage.

Whether it was the encumbrance of so many men and carriages, or a
mistaken sense of security, which led the emperor to order a day's
interval between the departure of each marshal, is uncertain; but most
probably it was the latter. Be that, however, as it may, he, Eugene,
Davoust, and Ney, quitted Smolensk in succession; and Ney was not to
leave it till the 16th or 17th. He had orders to make the artillery
dismount the cannon left behind, and bury them; to destroy the
ammunition, to drive all the stragglers before him, and to blow up the
towers which surrounded the city.

Kutusoff, meanwhile, was waiting for us at some leagues' distance,
prepared to cut in pieces, one after the