dly, "Had not his cavalry then charged
apropos? Were the Russians determined to conquer or die?"--The answer
was, that "being fanaticised by their leaders, and accustomed to fight
with the Turks, who gave no quarter, they would be killed sooner than
surrender." The emperor then fell into a deep meditation; and judging
that a battle of artillery would be the most certain, he multiplied his
orders to bring up, with all speed, the parks which had not yet joined
him.

That very same night, a cold mizzling rain began to fall, and the autumn
set in with a violent wind. This was an additional enemy, which it was
necessary to take into account; for this period of the year
corresponded with the age on which Napoleon was entering, and every one
knows the influence of the seasons of the year on the like seasons of
life.

During that night how many different agitations! The soldiers and the
officers had to prepare their arms, to repair their clothing, and to
combat cold and hunger; for their life was a continual combat. The
generals, and the emperor himself, were uneasy, lest their defeat of the
preceding day should have disheartened the Russians, and they should
escape us in the dark. Murat had anticipated this; we imagined several
times that we saw their fires burn more faintly, and that we heard the
noise of their departure; but day alone eclipsed the light of the
enemy's bivouacs.

This time there was no need to go far in quest of them. The sun of the
6th found the two armies again, and displayed them to each other, on the
same ground where it had left them the evening before. There was a
general feeling of exultation.

The emperor took advantage of the first rays of dawn, to advance between
the two lines, and to go from height to height along the whole front of
the hostile army. He saw the Russians crowning all the eminences, in a
vast semicircle, two leagues in extent, from the Moskwa to the old
Moscow road. Their right bordered the Kologha, from its influx into the
Moskwa to Borodino; their centre, from Gorcka to Semenowska, was the
saliant part of their line. Their right and left receded. The Kologha
rendered their right inaccessible.

The emperor perceived this immediately, and as, from its distance, this
wing was not more threatening than vulnerable, he took no account of it.
For him then the Russian army commenced at Gorcka, a village situated on
the high-road, and at the point of an elevated plain which overlooks