n the presence of each other!

Besides, it was perhaps because the Emperor had been wanting in prudence
at Moscow that he was now deficient in audacity: he was worn out; the
two affairs with the Cossacks had disgusted him: he felt for his
wounded; so many horrors disheartened him, and like men of extreme
resolutions, having ceased to hope for a complete victory, he determined
upon a precipitate retreat.

From that moment he had nothing in his view but Paris, just as on
leaving Paris he saw nothing but Moscow. It was on the 26th of October
that the fatal movement of our retreat commenced. Davoust with
twenty-five thousand men remained as a rear-guard. While he advanced a
few paces, and, without being aware of it, spread consternation among
the Russians, the grand army in astonishment turned its back on them. It
marched with downcast eyes, as if ashamed and humbled. In the midst of
it, its commander, gloomy and silent, seemed to be anxiously measuring
his line of communication with the fortresses on the Vistula.

For the space of more than two hundred and fifty leagues it offered but
two points where he could halt and rest, the first, Smolensk, and the
second, Minsk. He had made these two towns his two great depots, where
immense magazines were established. But Wittgenstein, still before
Polotsk, threatened the left flank of the former, and Tchitchakof,
already at Bresk-litowsky, the right flank of the latter. Wittgenstein's
force was gaining strength by recruits and fresh corps which he was
daily receiving, and by the gradual diminution of that of Saint Cyr.

Napoleon, however, reckoned upon the Duke of Belluno and his thirty-six
thousand fresh troops. The _corps d'armee_ had been at Smolensk ever
since the beginning of September. He reckoned also upon detachments
being sent from his depots, on the sick and wounded who had recovered,
and on the stragglers, who would be rallied and formed at Wilna into
marching battalions. All these would successively come into line, and
fill up the chasms made in his ranks by the sword, famine, and disease.
He should therefore have time to regain that position on the Duena and
the Borysthenes, where he wished it to be believed that his presence,
added to that of Victor, Saint Cyr, and Macdonald, would overawe
Wittgenstein, check Kutusoff, and threaten Alexander even in his second
capital.

He therefore proclaimed that he was going to take post on the Duena. But
it was not upon that