d the confusion great: Morand
nevertheless rallied and re-encouraged his men, retrieved matters, and
fought his way through.

It was Compans who put an end to the whole. He closed the march with his
division. Finding himself too closely pressed by the bravest troops of
Miloradowitch, he turned about, dashed in person at the most eager,
overthrew them, and having thus made them fear him, he finished his
retreat without further molestation. This conflict was glorious to each,
and its result disastrous to all: it was without order and unity. There
would have been troops enough to conquer, had there not been too many
commanders. It was not till near two o'clock that the latter met to
concert their manoeuvres, and these were even then executed without
harmony.

When at length the river, the town of Wiazma, night, mutual fatigue, and
Marshal Ney had separated them from the enemy, the danger being
adjourned and the bivouacs established, the numbers were counted.
Several pieces of cannon which had been broken, the baggage, and four
thousand killed or wounded, were missing. Many of the soldiers had
dispersed. Their honour was saved, but there were immense gaps in the
ranks. It was necessary to close them up, to bring every thing within a
narrower compass, to form what remained into a more compact whole. Each
regiment scarcely composed a battalion, each battalion a platoon. The
soldiers had no longer their accustomed places, comrades, or officers.

This sad re-organization took place by the light of the conflagration of
Wiazma, and during the successive discharges of the cannon of Ney and
Miloradowitch, the thunders of which were prolonged amid the double
darkness of night and the forests. Several times the relics of these
brave troops, conceiving that they were attacked, crawled to their arms.
Next morning, when they fell into their ranks again, they were
astonished at the smallness of their number.

CHAP. XI.

The spirits of the troops were still supported by the example of their
leaders, by the hopes of finding all their wants supplied at Smolensk,
and still more by the aspect of a yet brilliant sun, of that universal
source of hope and life, which seemed to contradict and deny the
spectacles of despair and death that already encompassed us.

But on the 6th of November, the heavens declared against us. Their azure
disappeared. The army marched enveloped in cold fogs. These fogs became
thicker, and presently an i