efactors than in smaller ones: the causes of so
many evils induced fresh ones; already enfeebled by famine, it was
necessary to make forced marches in order to escape from it, and to
reach the enemy. At night when they halted, the soldiers thronged into
the houses; there, worn out with fatigue and want, they threw themselves
upon the first dirty straw they met with.

The most robust had barely spirits left to knead the flour which they
found, and to light the ovens with which all those wooden houses were
supplied; others had scarcely strength to go a few paces in order to
make the fires necessary to cook some food; their officers, exhausted
like themselves, feebly gave orders to take more care, and neglected to
see that their orders were obeyed. A piece of burnt wood, at such times
escaping from an oven, or a spark from the fire of the bivouacs, was
sufficient to set fire to a castle or a whole village, and to cause the
deaths of many unfortunate soldiers who had taken refuge in them. In
other respects, these disorders were very rare in Lithuania.

The emperor was not ignorant of these details, but he had committed
himself too far. Even at Wilna, all these disorders had taken place; the
Duke of Treviso, among others, informed him, "that he had seen, from the
Niemen to the Vilia, nothing but ruined habitations, and baggage and
provision-waggons abandoned; they were found dispersed on the highways
and in the fields, overturned, broke open, and their contents scattered
here and there, and pillaged, as if they had been taken by the enemy: he
should have imagined himself following a defeated army. Ten thousand
horses had been killed by the cold rains of the great storm, and by the
unripe rye, which had become their new and only food. Their carcases
were lying encumbering the road: they sent forth a mephitic smell
impossible to breathe: it was a new scourge, which some compared to
famine, but much more terrible: several soldiers of the young guard had
already perished of hunger."

Up to that point Napoleon listened with calmness, but here he abruptly
interrupted the speaker. Wishing to escape from distress by incredulity,
he exclaimed, "It is impossible! where are their twenty days' provisions?
Soldiers well commanded never die of hunger."

A general, the author of this last report, was present. Napoleon turned
towards him; appealed to him, and pressed him with questions; and that
general, either from weakness or uncertain