. On the field between Borodino and the fleches, beside the
wood, the chief action of the day took place on an open space visible
from both sides and was fought in the simplest and most artless way.

The battle began on both sides with a cannonade from several hundred
guns.

Then when the whole field was covered with smoke, two divisions,
Campan's and Dessaix's, advanced from the French right, while Murat's
troops advanced on Borodino from their left.

From the Shevardino Redoubt where Napoleon was standing the fleches were
two thirds of a mile away, and it was more than a mile as the crow flies
to Borodino, so that Napoleon could not see what was happening there,
especially as the smoke mingling with the mist hid the whole locality.
The soldiers of Dessaix's division advancing against the fleches could
only be seen till they had entered the hollow that lay between them and
the fleches. As soon as they had descended into that hollow, the smoke
of the guns and musketry on the fleches grew so dense that it covered
the whole approach on that side of it. Through the smoke glimpses could
be caught of something black--probably men--and at times the glint of
bayonets. But whether they were moving or stationary, whether they were
French or Russian, could not be discovered from the Shevardino Redoubt.

The sun had risen brightly and its slanting rays struck straight into
Napoleon's face as, shading his eyes with his hand, he looked at the
fleches. The smoke spread out before them, and at times it looked as if
the smoke were moving, at times as if the troops moved. Sometimes shouts
were heard through the firing, but it was impossible to tell what was
being done there.

Napoleon, standing on the knoll, looked through a field glass, and in
its small circlet saw smoke and men, sometimes his own and sometimes
Russians, but when he looked again with the naked eye, he could not tell
where what he had seen was.

He descended the knoll and began walking up and down before it.

Occasionally he stopped, listened to the firing, and gazed intently at
the battlefield.

But not only was it impossible to make out what was happening from where
he was standing down below, or from the knoll above on which some of his
generals had taken their stand, but even from the fleches themselves--in
which by this time there were now Russian and now French soldiers,
alternately or together, dead, wounded, alive, frightened, or
maddened--even at those