there were without exaggeration four thousand men of the grand army
who refused to march in rank. The number was increasing daily. On the
sixth Napoleon was informed that Victor, having effected a junction
with Saint-Cyr, had checked Wittgenstein in a series of gallant
struggles, but that step by step the two divisions had been driven
back until now they were only thirty miles distant, having abandoned
the line of the Dwina, including the depot of Vitebsk. "Seize the
offensive; the safety of the army depends on it," was Napoleon's
desperate reply. Terrible as this news was to the general, it was
eclipsed in horror for the Emperor by the accounts he received at the
same time from Paris describing Malet's conspiracy, a movement to
overthrow the Empire based on the false rumor of his own death. "And
Napoleon II, did no one think of him?" he cried in anguish. Grand
army, reputation, personal prestige--all these he might lose and
survive; but to lose France, that were ruin indeed.

That night a heavy frost fell; then, and no sooner, did the relentless
severity of the Russian winter begin. This is proved by Napoleon's
famous twenty-ninth bulletin, and by the journal of Castellane, the
aide-de-camp who made the final copy of it; in spite of assertions put
forth later to sustain the legend of an army conquered by the
elements, the autumn had dallied far beyond its time. Next day the
weary march began again; scarcely a word escaped the Emperor. He was
pale, but his countenance gave no sign of panic; there was merely a
grim, persistent silence. The enemy hung on flank and rear, harassing
the demoralized column until it was more like a horde than an army.
With numbed limbs and in the gnawing misery of bitter cold, the French
straggled on. Men and horses died by the score; the survivors cut
strips of carrion wherewith to sustain life, and desperately pressed
forward, for all who left the highway fell into the enemy's hands. In
some bivouacs three hundred died overnight; there are statements in
the papers of officials which seem to indicate that in the struggle
for life the weaker often perished at the hands of their own comrades.
The half-crazed, frost-bitten, disorderly soldiers of the French van
reached Smolensk on the ninth, and on the thirteenth the remnants of
the rear, with many stragglers, came up and encamped. The heroes of
the hour were Eugene and Ney. Ney's division had well-nigh vanished in
their glory. Fighting without