d became scarcer every day. The cavalry were now almost wholly
dismounted, the horses still available being taken for the guns. Among
the divisions in front the disorganization was great indeed. It was a
mob rather than an army, and only when attacked did they form up, and
with sullen fury drive off the foe. At other times they tramped along
silently, ragged, and often shoeless, their feet wrapped in rough
bandages. Whenever one fell from weakness, he lay there unnoticed, save
that sometimes a comrade would, in answer to his entreaties to kill him
rather than to leave him to the mercy of the peasants, put his musket to
his head and finish him at once. No one straggled, except to search a
deserted cottage on the line, for all who fell into the hands of the
peasants--who followed the army like wolves after a wounded stag--were
either put to death by atrocious tortures, or stripped and left to
perish by cold. All the sufferings inflicted by the army in its advance
upon the peasantry were now repaid an hundredfold, and the atrocities
perpetrated upon all who fell into their hands were so terrible that Sir
Robert Wilson wrote to the Czar, imploring him for the honour of the
country to put a stop to them. Alexander at once issued a proclamation
offering the reward of a gold piece for every French prisoner brought
in, and so saved the lives of many hundreds of these unfortunates. In
the French army itself all feelings of humanity were also obliterated.
The men fought furiously among themselves for any scrap of food, and a
dead horse was often the centre of a desperate struggle. Those who fell
were at once stripped of their garments, and death came all the sooner
to put an end to their sufferings. The authority of the officers was
altogether unheeded.

Day by day the numbers dwindled away. The safety of the French army thus
far was chiefly due to the vacillation, if not the absolute treachery,
of Kutusow. Moving on by roads well supplied with provisions, and
perfectly acquainted with the movements of the enemy, he was able to
outmarch them, and several times had it absolutely in his power to
completely overwhelm the broken remains of Napoleon's army. But, in
spite of the entreaties of the generals and the indignation of the army,
he obstinately refused to give the order. The French army no longer
travelled by a single road; sometimes the corps were separated from each
other by great masses of Russian troops. Numerous detached ba