to restrain a happy smile, and
pronouncing the phrase "knocked out" with ringing distinctness.

CHAPTER IX

Pursued by the French army of a hundred thousand men under the command
of Bonaparte, encountering a population that was unfriendly to it,
losing confidence in its allies, suffering from shortness of supplies,
and compelled to act under conditions of war unlike anything that had
been foreseen, the Russian army of thirty-five thousand men commanded
by Kutuzov was hurriedly retreating along the Danube, stopping where
overtaken by the enemy and fighting rearguard actions only as far as
necessary to enable it to retreat without losing its heavy equipment.
There had been actions at Lambach, Amstetten, and Melk; but despite the
courage and endurance--acknowledged even by the enemy--with which the
Russians fought, the only consequence of these actions was a yet more
rapid retreat. Austrian troops that had escaped capture at Ulm and
had joined Kutuzov at Braunau now separated from the Russian army,
and Kutuzov was left with only his own weak and exhausted forces.
The defense of Vienna was no longer to be thought of. Instead of an
offensive, the plan of which, carefully prepared in accord with the
modern science of strategics, had been handed to Kutuzov when he was in
Vienna by the Austrian Hofkriegsrath, the sole and almost unattainable
aim remaining for him was to effect a junction with the forces that were
advancing from Russia, without losing his army as Mack had done at Ulm.

On the twenty-eighth of October Kutuzov with his army crossed to the
left bank of the Danube and took up a position for the first time
with the river between himself and the main body of the French. On the
thirtieth he attacked Mortier's division, which was on the left bank,
and broke it up. In this action for the first time trophies were taken:
banners, cannon, and two enemy generals. For the first time, after a
fortnight's retreat, the Russian troops had halted and after a fight had
not only held the field but had repulsed the French. Though the troops
were ill-clad, exhausted, and had lost a third of their number in
killed, wounded, sick, and stragglers; though a number of sick and
wounded had been abandoned on the other side of the Danube with a letter
in which Kutuzov entrusted them to the humanity of the enemy; and
though the big hospitals and the houses in Krems converted into military
hospitals could no longer accommodate all t