ould neither walk any farther, nor eat. Their eyes, sunk in
their sockets, were dull and motionless. They were killed without
seeking to avoid the fatal blow. Other misfortunes followed: several
convoys were intercepted, magazines taken, and a drove of eight hundred
oxen had just been carried off from Krasnoe."

This man added, that "regard ought also to be had to the great quantity
of detachments which had passed through Smolensk; to the stay which
Marshal Victor, twenty-eight thousand men, and about fifteen thousand
sick, had made there; to the multitude of posts and marauders whom the
insurrection and the approach of the enemy had driven back into the
city. All had subsisted upon the magazines; it had been necessary to
deliver out nearly sixty thousand rations per day; and lastly,
provisions and cattle had been sent forward towards Moscow as far as
Mojaisk and towards Kalouga as far as Yelnia."

Many of these allegations were well founded. A chain of other magazines
had been formed from Smolensk to Minsk and Wilna. These two towns were
in a still greater degree than Smolensk, centres of provisioning, of
which the fortresses of the Vistula formed the first line. The total
quantity of provisions distributed over this space was incalculable; the
efforts for transporting them thither gigantic, and the result little
better than nothing. They were insufficient in that immensity.

Thus great expeditions are crushed by their own weight. Human limits had
been surpassed; the genius of Napoleon, in attempting to soar above
time, climate, and distances, had, as it were, lost itself in space:
great as was its measure, it had been beyond it.

For the rest, he was passionate, from necessity. He had not deceived
himself in regard to the inadequacy of his supplies. Alexander alone had
deceived him. Accustomed to triumph over every thing by the terror of
his name, and the astonishment produced by his audacity, he had ventured
his army, himself, his fortune, his all, on a first movement of
Alexander's. He was still the same man as in Egypt, at Marengo, Ulm, and
Esslingen; it was Ferdinand Cortes; it was the Macedonian burning his
ships, and above all solicitous, in spite of his troops, to penetrate
still farther into unknown Asia; finally, it was Caesar risking his whole
fortune in a fragile bark.

BOOK X.

CHAP. I.

The surprise of Vinkowo, however, that unexpected attack of Kutusoff in
front of Moscow, was only