as indigenous to this country, and that we were strangers in
it. Every thing was altered: roads, faces, courage: the army became
sullen, the march toilsome, and consternation began.

Some leagues from Mojaisk, we had to cross the Kologa. It was but a
large rivulet; two trees, the same number of props, and a few planks
were sufficient to ensure the passage: but such was the confusion and
inattention, that the Emperor was detained there. Several pieces of
cannon, which it was attempted to get across by fording, were lost. It
seemed as if each _corps d'armee_ was marching separately as if there
was no staff, no general order, no common tie, nothing that bound these
corps together. In reality the elevation of each of their chiefs
rendered them too independent of one another. The Emperor himself had
become so exceedingly great, that he was at an immeasurable distance
from the details of his army; and Berthier, holding an intermediate
place between him and officers, who were all kings, princes, or
marshals, was obliged to act with a great deal of caution. He was
besides wholly incompetent to the situation.

The Emperor, stopped by the trifling obstacle of a broken bridge,
confined himself to a gesture expressive of dissatisfaction and
contempt; to which Berthier replied only by a look of resignation. On
this particular point he had received no orders from the Emperor: he
therefore conceived that he was not to blame; for Berthier was a
faithful echo, a mirror, and nothing more. Always ready, clear and
distinct, he reflected, he repeated the Emperor, but added nothing, and
what Napoleon forgot was forgotten without retrieve.

After passing the Kologa, we marched on, absorbed in thought, when some
of us, raising our eyes, uttered an exclamation of horror. Each
instantly looked around him, and beheld a plain trampled, bare and
devastated, all the trees cut down within a few feet from the surface,
and farther off craggy hills, the highest of which appeared to be the
most misshapen. It had all the appearance of an extinguished and
destroyed volcano. The ground was covered all around with fragments of
helmets and cuirasses, broken drums, gun-stocks, tatters of uniforms,
and standards dyed with blood.

On this desolate spot lay thirty thousand half-devoured corses. A number
of skeletons, left on the summit of one of the hills, overlooked the
whole. It seemed as if death had here fixed his empire; it was that
terrible redoubt, the