marches behind him, when he ought to have been no
more than three days later; he considered the genius of that marshal as
too methodical to direct, in a suitable manner, so irregular a march.

The whole army, and the corps of Prince Eugene in particular, repeated
these complaints. They said, that "owing to his spirit of order and
obstinacy, Davoust had suffered the enemy to overtake him at the Abbey
of Kalotskoi; that he had there done ragamuffin Cossacks the honour of
retiring before them, step by step, and in square battalions, as if they
had been Mamelukes; that Platof, with his cannon, had played at a
distance on the deep masses which he had presented to him; that then
only the marshal had opposed to them merely a few slender lines, which
had speedily formed again, and some light pieces, the first fire of
which had produced the desired effect; but that these manoeuvres and
regular foraging excursions had occasioned a great loss of time, which
is always valuable in retreat, and especially amidst famine, through
which the most skilful manoeuvre was to pass with all possible
expedition."

In reply to this, Davoust urged his natural horror of every kind of
disorder, which had at first led him to attempt to introduce regularity
into this flight; he had endeavoured to cover the wrecks of it, fearing
the shame and the danger of leaving for the enemy these evidences of our
disastrous state.

He added, that, "people were not aware of all that he had had to
surmount; he had found the country completely devastated, houses
demolished, and the trees burned to their very roots; for it was not to
him who came last, that the work of general destruction had been left;
the conflagration preceded him. It appeared as if the rear-guard had
been totally forgotten! No doubt, too, people forgot the frozen road
rough with the tracks of all who had gone before him; as well as the
deep fords and broken bridges, which no one thought of repairing, as
each corps, when not engaged, cared but for itself alone."

Did they not know besides, that the whole tremendous train of
stragglers, belonging to the other corps, on horseback, on foot, and in
vehicles, aggravated these embarrassments, just as in a diseased body
all the complaints fly to and unite in the part most affected? Every day
he marched between these wretches and the Cossacks, driving forward the
one and pressed by the other.

Thus, after passing Gjatz, he had found the slough of Cza