emed that now--when any battle
must be horrible and senseless--was the very time to fight and conquer
somebody. Kutuzov merely shrugged his shoulders when one after
another they presented projects of maneuvers to be made with those
soldiers--ill-shod, insufficiently clad, and half starved--who within a
month and without fighting a battle had dwindled to half their number,
and who at the best if the flight continued would have to go a greater
distance than they had already traversed, before they reached the
frontier.

This longing to distinguish themselves, to maneuver, to overthrow, and
to cut off showed itself particularly whenever the Russians stumbled on
the French army.

So it was at Krasnoe, where they expected to find one of the three
French columns and stumbled instead on Napoleon himself with sixteen
thousand men. Despite all Kutuzov's efforts to avoid that ruinous
encounter and to preserve his troops, the massacre of the broken mob
of French soldiers by worn-out Russians continued at Krasnoe for three
days.

Toll wrote a disposition: "The first column will march to so and so,"
etc. And as usual nothing happened in accord with the disposition.
Prince Eugene of Wurttemberg fired from a hill over the French crowds
that were running past, and demanded reinforcements which did not
arrive. The French, avoiding the Russians, dispersed and hid themselves
in the forest by night, making their way round as best they could, and
continued their flight.

Miloradovich, who said he did not want to know anything about the
commissariat affairs of his detachment, and could never be found when
he was wanted--that chevalier sans peur et sans reproche * as he styled
himself--who was fond of parleys with the French, sent envoys demanding
their surrender, wasted time, and did not do what he was ordered to do.

* Knight without fear and without reproach.

"I give you that column, lads," he said, riding up to the troops and
pointing out the French to the cavalry.

And the cavalry, with spurs and sabers urging on horses that could
scarcely move, trotted with much effort to the column presented
to them--that is to say, to a crowd of Frenchmen stark with cold,
frost-bitten, and starving--and the column that had been presented to
them threw down its arms and surrendered as it had long been anxious to
do.

At Krasnoe they took twenty-six thousand prisoners, several hundred
cannon, and a stick called a "marshal's staff," an