o the carnage of a battle-tide, which flowed unceasingly from the
ruined walls of the Kremlin to the banks of the Vistula: the battle of
Borisow and the passage of the Berezina followed fast on each other.
And now we heard that the Emperor had surrendered the chief command
to Murat, and was hastening back to France with lightning speed; for
already the day of his evil fortune had thrown its shadow over the
capital. No longer reckoned by tens of thousands, that vast army had now
dwindled down to divisions of a few hundred men. The Old Guard scarce
exceeded one thousand; and of twenty entire regiments of cavalry,
Murat mustered a single squadron as a bodyguard. Crowds of wounded and
mutilated men dragged their weary limbs along over the hardened snow,
or through dense pine forests where no villages were to be met with,--a
fatuous determination to strive to reach France, the only impulse
surviving amid all their sufferings.

With the defections of D'York and Massenbach, then began that new
feature of disaster which was so soon to burst forth with all the fell
fury of long pent-up hatred. The nationality of Germany--so long, so
cruelly insulted--now saw the day of retribution arrive. Misfortune
hastened misfortune, and defeat engendered treason in the ranks of the
Emperor's allies. Murat, too, the favorite of Napoleon, the king of his
creation, deserted him now, and fled ignominiously from the command of
the army.

"The Elbe! the Elbe!" was now the cry amid the shattered ranks of that
army which but a year before saw no limit to its glorious path. The Elbe
was the only line remaining which promised a moment's repose from the
fatigues and privations of months long. Along that road the army could
halt, and stem the tide of pursuit, however hotly it pressed. The
Prussians had already united with the Russians; the defection of Austria
could not be long distant; Saxony was appealed to, as a member of the
German family, to join in arms against the Tyrant; and the wild "houra"
of the Cossack now blended with the loud "Vorwarts" of injured Prussia.

"Where shall he seek succor now? What remains to him in this last
eventful struggle? How shall the Emperor call back to life the legions
by whose valor his great victories were gained, and Europe made a vassal
at the foot of his throne?" Such was the thought that never left me day
or night. Ever present before me was his calm brow, and his face paler,
but not less handsome, than its w