s it became necessary to march rapidly, to pursue, to
anticipate, and to attack.

But after passing Smolensk, Platof passed over to the right flank of the
road, in order to join Wittgenstein. The war was then entirely
transferred to that side.

On the 22d of November, the army had a disagreeable march from Orcha to
Borizof, on a wide road, (skirted by a double row of large birch trees,)
in which the snow had melted, and through a deep and liquid mud. The
weakest were drowned in it; it detained and delivered to the Cossacks
such of our wounded, as, under the idea of a continuance of the frost,
had exchanged their waggons for sledges.

In the midst of this gradual decay, an action was witnessed exhibiting
something of antique energy. Two marines of the guard were cut off from
their column by a band of Cossacks, who seemed determined to take them.
One became discouraged, and wished to surrender; the other continued to
fight, and called out to him, that if he was coward enough to do so, he
would certainly shoot him. In fact, seeing his companion throw away his
musket, and stretching out his arms to the enemy, he brought him to the
ground just as he fell into the hands of the Cossacks; then profiting by
their surprise, he quickly reloaded his musket, with which he threatened
the most forward. He kept them thus at bay, retreated from tree to tree,
gained ground upon them, and succeeded in rejoining his troop.

It was during the first days of the march to Borizof, that the news of
the fall of Minsk became generally known in the army. The leaders
themselves began then to look around them with consternation; their
imagination, tormented with such a long continuance of frightful
spectacles, gave them glimpses of a still more fatal futurity. In their
private conversations, several exclaimed, that, "like Charles XII. in
the Ukraine, Napoleon had carried his army to Moscow only to destroy
it."

Others would not agree in attributing the calamities we at present
suffered to that incursion. Without wishing to excuse the sacrifices to
which we had submitted, by the hope of terminating the war in a single
campaign, they asserted, "that that hope had been well founded; that in
pushing his line of operation as far as Moscow, Napoleon had given to
that lengthened column a base sufficiently broad and solid."

They showed "the trace of this base marked out by the Duena, the Dnieper,
the Ula, and the Berezina, from Riga to Bobruisk; they