uld come! It was enough to stun even a Napoleon.

But the present was bad enough, and momentarily grew worse. The road
was lined with charred ruins and devastated fields, and the waysides
were dotted with groups of listless, desperate soldiers who fell out
and sank on the ground as the straggling ranks of their comrades
tramped on. Skirting the battle-field of Borodino, the marching
battalions looked askance on the ghastly heaps of unburied corpses;
but the wounded survivors were dragged from field hospitals and other
cavernous shelters to be carried onward with the departing army. They
were a sight which in some cases turned melancholy into madness. In
order to transport them the wagons were lightened by throwing the
spoils of Moscow into the pond at Semlino. On the thirtieth despatches
of grave import reached the Emperor informing him that Schwarzenberg
had retreated behind the Bug, leaving an open road from Brest for
Tchitchagoff's veterans to attack the right flank of the columns
flying from Moscow. Victor, learning of Napoleon's straits, had left
fifteen thousand men in Smolensk, and was advancing to join Saint-Cyr
on the Dwina in order to assure the safety of the main army from that
side. To him came the dismal news that Wittgenstein had resumed the
offensive against Saint-Cyr, and that the line of attack on the French
left was as open from the north as was that on the other side from the
south. Davout's rear-guard was steadily disintegrating under hardships
and before the harassing attacks of the Russian riders under Platoff.
Partizan warfare was assuming alarming dimensions. In a single swoop
two thousand French recruits under Baraguey d'Hilliers had been made
prisoners, and similar events were growing all too frequent. In
consequence of these crushing discouragements the whole army was
rearrayed. "We must march as we did in Egypt," ran the order: "the
baggage in the middle, as densely surrounded as the road will permit,
with a half battalion in front, a half battalion behind, battalions
right and left, so that when we face we can fire in every direction."
Ney's corps was then assigned to the place of danger in the rear--a
place he kept with desperate gallantry until he earned the title
"bravest of the brave."

The early promise of substantially reinforcing Kutusoff's army had not
been fulfilled. The fanatic zeal at first displayed soon effervesced,
the new levies were untrustworthy, and the long marches of the