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ng position, where they might give battle with advantage. On the other hand, there is no reason why we should fight here. We have come down thirty or forty miles out of the direct road to Moscow, and if, instead of doing so, we had crossed the river, and had gone straight on, the Russians must have evacuated the town and pushed on with all speed in order to get between us and Moscow. But this marching about without getting a battle discourages men more even than defeat, and I hope that it will do something to restore discipline among the Germans and Austrians, ay, and among our own troops too. I have been through a number of campaigns, and I have never seen such disorder, such plunder, such want of discipline as has been shown since we entered Russia. I tell you, Jules, even a defeat would do us good. Look at the Russians; they never leave a straggler behind them, never a dismounted gun, while the roads behind us are choked up with our abandoned guns and waggons, and the whole country is covered with our marauders. I should be glad if one of the brigades was ordered to break up into companies and to march back, spreading out across the whole country we have traversed, and shooting every man they met between this and the frontier, whether he was French, German, Austrian, or Pole." "It has been terrible," Julian agreed, "but at least we have the satisfaction of knowing that Ney's corps d'armee has furnished a smaller share of stragglers than most of the others." "That is true enough, but bad is the best, lad. Some of our battalions are nearly all young soldiers, and I can't say much for their conduct, while the seven battalions of Spaniards, Wurtemburgers, and men from the Duchy of Baden have behaved shamefully, and I don't think that the four squadrons of Polish cavalry have been any better. We have all been bad; there is no denying it; and never should we have conquered Germany, crushed Prussia, and forced Austria to submit, had our armies behaved in the way they have done of late. Napoleon would soon have put a stop to it then. He would have had one or two of the worst regiments drawn up, and would have decimated them as a lesson to the rest. Now his orders seem to go for nothing. He has far too much on his mind to attend to such things, and the generals have been thinking so much of pressing on after the enemy that they have done nothing to see the orders carried into effect. It was the same sort of thing that drove
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