ojaisk to
Smolensk, recommended by Murat. And what a route! a desert of sand and
ashes, where convoys of wounded would increase our embarrassment, where
we should meet with nothing but ruins, traces of blood, skeletons and
famine!

"Moreover, though he deemed it his duty to give his opinion when it was
asked, he was ready to obey orders contrary to it with the same zeal as
if they were consonant with his suggestions; but that the Emperor alone
had a right to impose silence on him, and not Murat, who was not his
Sovereign, and never should be!"

The quarrel growing warm, Bessieres and Berthier interposed. As for the
Emperor, still absorbed in the same attitude, he appeared insensible to
what was passing. At length he broke up this council with the words,
"Well, gentlemen, I will decide."

He decided on retreat, and by that road which would carry him most
speedily to a distance from the enemy; but it required another desperate
effort before he could bring himself to give an order of march so new to
him. So painful was this effort, that in the inward struggle which it
occasioned, he lost the use of his senses. Those who attended him have
asserted, that the report of another warm affair with the Cossacks,
towards Borowsk, a few leagues in the rear of the army, was the last
shock which induced him finally to adopt this fatal resolution.

It is a remarkable fact, that he issued orders for this retreat
northward, at the very moment that Kutusoff and his Russians, dismayed
by the defeat of Malo-Yaroslawetz, were retiring southward.

CHAP. V.

The very same night a similar anxiety had agitated the Russian camp.
During the combat of Malo-Yaroslawetz, Kutusoff had approached the field
of battle, groping his way, as it were, pausing at every step, and
examining the ground, as if he was afraid of its sinking beneath him; he
did not send off the different corps which were dispatched to the
assistance of Doctorof, till the orders for that purpose were absolutely
extorted from him. He durst not place himself in person across
Napoleon's way, till an hour when general battles are not to be
apprehended.

Wilson, warm from the action, then hastened to him.--Wilson, that active
bustling Englishman, whom we had seen in Egypt, in Spain, and every
where else, the enemy of the French and of Napoleon. He was the
representative of the allies in the Russian army; he was in the midst of
Kutusoff's army an independent man, an observ