en
thousand men; and now, with the exception of about six thousand, the
rest had no longer any form of division, brigade, or regiment.

Night, hunger, cold, the fall of a number of officers, the loss of the
baggage on the other side of the river, the example of so many runaways,
and the much more forbidding one of the wounded, who had been abandoned
on both sides of the river, and were left rolling in despair on the
snow, which was covered with their blood--every thing; in short, had
contributed to discourage them; they were confounded in the mass of
disbanded men who had come from Moscow.

The whole still formed sixty thousand men, but without the least order
or unity. All marched pell-mell, cavalry, infantry, artillery, French
and Germans; there was no longer either wing or centre. The artillery
and carriages drove on through this disorderly crowd, with no other
instructions than to proceed as quickly as possible.

On this narrow and hilly causeway, many were crushed to death in
crowding together through the defiles, after which there was a general
dispersion to every point where either shelter or provisions were likely
to be found. In this manner did Napoleon reach Kamen, where he slept,
along with the prisoners made on the preceding day, who were put into a
fold like sheep. These poor wretches, after devouring even the dead
bodies of their fellows, almost all perished of cold and hunger.

On the 30th he reached Pleszezenitzy. Thither the Duke of Reggio, after
being wounded, had retired the day before, with about forty officers and
soldiers. He fancied himself in safety, when all at once the Russian
partizan, Landskoy, with one hundred and fifty hussars, four hundred
Cossacks, and two cannon, penetrated, into the village, and filled all
the streets of it.

Oudinot's feeble escort was dispersed. The marshal saw himself reduced
to defend himself with only seventeen others, in a wooden house, but he
did so with such audacity and success, that the enemy was astonished,
quitted the village, and took position on a height, from which he
attacked it with his cannon. The relentless destiny of this brave
marshal so ordered it, that in this skirmish he was again wounded by a
splinter of wood.

Two Westphalian battalions, which preceded the Emperor, at last made
their appearance and disengaged him, but not till late, and not until
these Germans and the marshal's escort (who at first did not recognize
each other as friends