the heights; there he would see
that the last moment of Napoleon was already come. Would he allow him
even to get beyond the frontiers of Russia proper, which loudly called
for the sacrifice of this great victim? Nothing remained but to strike;
let him only give the order, one charge would be sufficient, and in two
hours the face of Europe would be entirely changed!"

Then, gradually getting warmer at the coolness with which Kutusoff
listened to him, Wilson, for the third time, threatened him with the
general indignation. "Already, in his army, at the sight of the
straggling, mutilated, and dying column, which was about to escape from
him, he might hear the Cossacks exclaiming, what a shame it was to allow
these skeletons to escape in this manner out of their tomb!" But
Kutusoff, whom old age, that misfortune without hope, rendered
indifferent, became angry at the attempts made to rouse him, and by a
short and violent answer, shut the indignant Englishman's mouth.

It is asserted that the report of a spy had represented to him Krasnoe
as filled with an enormous mass of the imperial guard, and that the old
marshal was afraid of compromising his reputation by attacking it. But
the sight of our distress emboldened Beningsen; this chief of the staff
prevailed upon Strogonof, Gallitzin, and Miloradowitch, with a force of
more than fifty thousand Russians, and one hundred pieces of cannon, to
venture to attack at daylight, in spite of Kutusoff, fourteen thousand
famished, enfeebled, and half-frozen French and Italians.

This was a danger, the imminence of which Napoleon fully comprehended.
He might escape from it; daylight had not yet appeared. He was at
liberty to avoid this fatal engagement; to gain Orcha and Borizof by
rapid marches along with Eugene and his guard; there he could rally his
forces with thirty thousand French under Victor and Oudinot, with
Dombrowski, with Regnier, with Schwartzenberg, and with all his depots,
and be might again, the following year, make his appearance as
formidable as ever.

On the 17th, before daylight, he issued his orders, armed himself, and
going out on foot, at the head of his old guard, began his march. But it
was not towards Poland, his ally, that it was directed, nor towards
France, where he would be still received as the head of a rising
dynasty, and the Emperor of the West. His words on taking up his sword
on this occasion, were "I have sufficiently acted the emperor; it is
ti