me overturned, others with the horses still harnessed, and
the poor animals worn out, expiring and half devoured.

How, near Korythinia, at the end of their first day's march, a violent
cannonading and the whistling of several bullets over their heads, had
led them to imagine that a battle had just commenced. This discharge
appeared to proceed from before and quite close to them even upon the
road, and yet they could not get sight of a single enemy. Ricard and his
division advanced with a view to discover them, but they only found, in
a turn of the road, two French batteries abandoned, with their
ammunition, and in the neighbouring field a horde of wretched Cossacks,
who immediately fled, terrified at their audacity in setting fire to
them, and at the noise they had made.

Ney's officers here interrupted their narrative to inquire in their turn
what had passed? What was the cause of the general discouragement? why
had the cannon been abandoned to the enemy untouched? Had they not had
time to spike them, or at least to spoil their ammunition?

In continuation, they said they had hitherto only discovered the traces
of a disastrous march. But next morning there was a complete change, and
they confessed their unlucky presentiments when they arrived at that
field of snow reddened with blood, sprinkled with broken cannon and
mutilated corses. The dead bodies still marked the ranks and places of
battle; they pointed them out to each other. _There_ had been the 14th
division; _there_ were still to be seen, on the broken plates of their
caps, the numbers of its regiments. _There_ had been the Italian guard;
there were its dead, whose uniforms were still distinguishable! But
where were its living remnants? Vainly did they interrogate that field
of blood, these lifeless forms, the motionless and frozen silence of the
desert and the grave! they could neither penetrate into the fate of
their companions, nor into that which awaited themselves.

Ney hurried them rapidly over all these ruins, and they had advanced
without impediment to a part of the road, where it descends into a deep
ravine, from which it rises into a broad and level height. It was that
of Katova, and the same field of battle, where, three months before, in
their triumphant march, they had beat Newerowskoi, and saluted Napoleon
with the cannon which they had taken the day before from his enemies.
They said they recollected the situation, notwithstanding the differen