said that
Macdonald, Saint Cyr and De Wrede, Victor and Dombrowski were there
waiting for them; there were thus, including Schwartzenberg, and even
Augereau, (who protected the interval between the Elbe and the Niemen
with fifty thousand men,) nearly two hundred and eighty thousand
soldiers on the defensive, who, from the north to the south, supported
the attack of one hundred and fifty thousand men upon the east; and from
thence they argued, that this _point_ upon Moscow, however hazardous it
might appear, had been both sufficiently prepared, and was worthy of the
genius of Napoleon, and that its success was possible; in fact, its
failure had been entirely occasioned by errors of detail."

They then brought to mind our useless waste of lives before Smolensk,
Junot's inaction at Valoutina, and they maintained, "that in spite of
all these losses, Russia would have been completely conquered on the
field of battle of the Moskwa, if Marshal Ney's first successes had been
followed up.

"Even at the last, although the expedition had failed in a military
point of view, by the indecision of that day, and politically by the
burning of Moscow, the army might still have returned from it safe and
sound. From the time of our entrance into that capital, had not the
Russian general and the Russian winter allowed us, the one forty, and
the other fifty days, to recover ourselves, and to make our retreat?"

Deploring afterwards the rash obstinacy of losing so much time at
Moscow, and the fatal hesitation at Malo-Yaroslawetz, they proceeded to
reckon up their losses. Since their leaving Moscow, they had lost all
their baggage, five hundred cannon, thirty-one eagles, twenty-seven
generals, forty thousand prisoners, sixty thousand dead: all that
remained were forty thousand stragglers, unarmed, and eight thousand
effective soldiers.

Last of all, when their column of attack had been destroyed, they asked,
"by what fatality it had happened, that the remains of this column, when
collected at its base, which had been vigorously supported, were left
without knowing where to halt, or to take breath? Why could they not
even concentrate themselves at Minsk and at Wilna, behind the marshes of
the Berezina, and there keep back the enemy, at least for some time,
take advantage of the winter and recruit themselves?

"But no, all is lost by another side, by the fault of entrusting an
Austrian to guard the magazines, and cover the retreat of all t