een our squadrons, and coolly reloading their arms. They reckoned
upon the heaviness of our cavalry of the _elite_, and the swiftness of
their own horses, which they urge with a whip. Their flight was effected
without disorder; they faced round several times, without waiting indeed
till within reach of fire, so that they left scarcely any wounded and
not one prisoner. At length they enticed us on to ravines covered with
bushes, where we were stopped by their artillery, which was waiting for
them. All this furnished subject for reflection. Our army was worn down;
and the war had begun again with new and undiminished spirit.

The Emperor, struck with astonishment that the enemy had dared to attack
him, halted until the plain was cleared; after which he returned to
Malo-Yaroslawetz, where the viceroy pointed out to him the obstacles
which had been conquered the preceding day.

The ground itself spoke sufficiently. Never was field of battle more
terribly eloquent. Its marked features; its ruins covered with blood;
the streets, the line of which could no longer be recognized but by the
long train of the dead, whose heads were crushed by the wheels of the
cannon, the wounded, who were still seen issuing from the rubbish and
crawling along, with their garments, their hair, and their limbs half
consumed by the fire, and uttering lamentable cries; finally, the
doleful sound of the last melancholy honours which the grenadiers were
paying to the remains of their colonels and generals who had been
slain--all attested the extreme obstinacy of the conflict. In this scene
the Emperor, it was said, beheld nothing but glory: he exclaimed, that
"the honour of so proud a day belonged exclusively to Prince Eugene."
This sight, nevertheless, aggravated the painful impression which had
already seized him. He then advanced to the elevated plain.

CHAP. IV.

Can you ever forget, comrades, the fatal field which put a stop to the
conquest of the world, where the victories of twenty years were blasted,
where the great edifice of our fortune began to totter to its
foundation? Do you not still figure to yourselves the blood-stained
ruins of that town, those deep ravines, and the woods which surround
that elevated plain and convert it, as it were, into a tented field? On
one side were the French, quitting the north, which they shunned; on the
other, at the entrance of the wood, were the Russians, guarding the
south, and striving to drive