The very same night a similar anxiety had agitated the Russian camp. During the combat of Malo-Yaroslawetz, Kutusoff had approached the field of battle, groping his way, as it were, pausing at every step, and examining the ground, as if he was afraid of its sinking beneath him; he did not send off the different corps which were dispatched to the assistance of Doctorof, till the orders for that purpose were absolutely extorted from him. He durst not place himself in person across Napoleon's way, till an hour when general battles are not to be apprehended.

Wilson, warm from the action, then hastened to him.—Wilson, that active bustling Englishman, whom we had seen in Egypt, in Spain, and every where else, the enemy of the French and of Napoleon. He was the representative of the allies in the Russian army; he was in the midst of Kutusoff's army an independent man, an observer, nay, even a judge—infallible motives of aversion; his presence was odious to the old Russian general; and as hatred never fails to beget hatred, both cordially detested each other.

Wilson reproached him with his excessive dilatoriness; he reminded him that five times in one day it had caused them to lose the victory, in the battle of Vinkowo, on the 18th of October. In fact, on that day Murat would have been destroyed, had Kutusoff fully occupied the front of the French by a brisk attack, while Beningsen was turning their left wing. But either from negligence, or that tardiness which is the fault of age, or as several Russians assert, because Kutusoff was more envious of Beningsen than inimical to Napoleon, the veteran had attacked too faintly, and too late, and had stopped too soon.

Wilson continued to insist on his agreeing to a decisive engagement on the following day, and on his refusal, he asked, "Was he then determined to open a free passage for Napoleon? to allow him to escape with his victory? What a cry of indignation would be raised in Petersburgh, in London, throughout all Europe! Did he not already hear the murmurs of his own troops?"

Kutusoff, irritated at this, replied, that "he would certainly rather make a bridge of gold for the enemy than compromise his army, and with it the fate of the whole empire. Was not Napoleon fleeing? why then stop him and force him to conquer? The season was sufficient to destroy him: of all the allies of Russia, they could rely with most confidence on winter; and he should wait for its assistance. As for the Russian army, it was under his command, and it would obey him in spite of the clamours of Wilson; Alexander, when informed of his proceedings, would approve them. What did he care for England? was it for her that he was fighting? He was a true-born Russian, his fondest wish was to see Russia delivered, and delivered she would be without risking the chance of another battle; and as for the rest of Europe, it was nothing to him whether it was under the dominion of France or England."

Thus was Wilson repulsed, and yet Kutusoff, shut up with the French army in the elevated plain of Malo-Yaroslawetz, was compelled to put himself into the most threatening attitude. He there drew up, on the 25th, all his divisions, and seven hundred pieces of artillery. No doubts were any longer entertained in the two armies that a decisive day had arrived: Wilson was of that opinion himself. He remarked that the Russian lines had at their back a muddy ravine, across which there was an unsafe bridge. This only way of retreat, in the sight of an enemy, appeared to him to be impracticable. Kutusoff was now in such a situation that he must either conquer or perish; and the Englishman was hugging himself at the prospect of a decisive engagement: whether its issue proved fatal to Napoleon or dangerous to Russia, it must be bloody, and England could not but be a gainer by it.

Still uneasy, however, he went at night through the ranks: he was delighted to hear Kutusoff swear that he was at length going to fight; he triumphed on seeing all the Russian generals preparing for a terrible conflict; Beningsen alone had still his doubts on the subject. The Englishman, nevertheless, considering that the position no longer admitted of falling back, at length lay down to wait for daylight, when about three in the morning a general order for retreat awoke him. All his efforts were ineffectual. Kutusoff had resolved to direct his flight southward, first to Gonczarewo, and then beyond Kalouga; and at the Oka every thing was by this time ready for his passage.

It was at that very instant that Napoleon ordered his troops to retire northward on Mojaisk. The two armies therefore turned their backs on each other, mutually deceiving each other by means of their rear-guards.

On the part of Kutusoff, Wilson asserts, that his retreat was like a rout. Cavalry, cannon, carriages, and battalions thronged from all sides to the entrance of the bridge, against which the Russian army was backed. There all these columns, hurrying from the right, the left, and the centre, met, clashed, and became blended into so enormous and so dense a mass, that it lost all power of motion. It took several hours to disentangle it and to clear the passage. A few balls discharged by Davoust, which he regarded as thrown away, fell among this confused crowd.

Napoleon needed but to have advanced upon this disorderly rabble. It was after the greatest effort, that of Malo-Yaroslawetz, had been made, and when he had nothing to do but to march, that he retreated. But such is war! in which it is impossible to attempt too much or to be too daring. One army knows not what the other is doing. The advanced posts are the exterior of these two great hostile bodies, by means of which they overawe one another. What an abyss there is between two armies that are in the presence of each other!

Besides, it was perhaps because the Emperor had been wanting in prudence at Moscow that he was now deficient in audacity: he was worn out; the two affairs with the Cossacks had disgusted him: he felt for his wounded; so many horrors disheartened him, and like men of extreme resolutions, having ceased to hope for a complete victory, he determined upon a precipitate retreat.

From that moment he had nothing in his view but Paris, just as on leaving Paris he saw nothing but Moscow. It was on the 26th of October that the fatal movement of our retreat commenced. Davoust with twenty-five thousand men remained as a rear-guard. While he advanced a few paces, and, without being aware of it, spread consternation among the Russians, the grand army in astonishment turned its back on them. It marched with downcast eyes, as if ashamed and humbled. In the midst of it, its commander, gloomy and silent, seemed to be anxiously measuring his line of communication with the fortresses on the Vistula.

For the space of more than two hundred and fifty leagues it offered but two points where he could halt and rest, the first, Smolensk, and the second, Minsk. He had made these two towns his two great depÔts, where immense magazines were established. But Wittgenstein, still before Polotsk, threatened the left flank of the former, and Tchitchakof, already at Bresk-litowsky, the right flank of the latter. Wittgenstein's force was gaining strength by recruits and fresh corps which he was daily receiving, and by the gradual diminution of that of Saint Cyr.

Napoleon, however, reckoned upon the Duke of Belluno and his thirty-six thousand fresh troops. The corps d'armÉe had been at Smolensk ever since the beginning of September. He reckoned also upon detachments being sent from his depÔts, on the sick and wounded who had recovered, and on the stragglers, who would be rallied and formed at Wilna into marching battalions. All these would successively come into line, and fill up the chasms made in his ranks by the sword, famine, and disease. He should therefore have time to regain that position on the DÜna and the Borysthenes, where he wished it to be believed that his presence, added to that of Victor, Saint Cyr, and Macdonald, would overawe Wittgenstein, check Kutusoff, and threaten Alexander even in his second capital.

He therefore proclaimed that he was going to take post on the DÜna. But it was not upon that river and the Borysthenes that his thoughts rested: he was sensible that it was not with a harassed and reduced army that he could guard the interval between those two rivers and their courses, which the ice would speedily efface. He placed no reliance on a sea of snow six feet deep, with which winter would speedily cover those parts, but to which it would also give solidity: the whole then would be one wide road for the enemy to reach him, to penetrate into the intervals between his wooden cantonments, scattered over a frontier of two hundred leagues, and to burn them.

Had he at first stopped there, as he declared he should on his arrival at Witepsk; had he there taken proper measures for preserving and recruiting his army; had Tormasof, Tchitchakof and Hoertel been driven out of Volhynia; had he raised a hundred thousand Cossacks in those rich provinces; his winter-quarters would then have been habitable. But now, nothing was ready for him there; and not only was his force inadequate to the purpose, but Tchitchakof, a hundred leagues in his rear, would still threaten his communications with Germany and France and his retreat. It was therefore at a hundred leagues beyond Smolensk, in a more compact position, behind the morasses of the Berezina, it was to Minsk, that it was necessary to repair in search of winter-quarters, from which he was forty marches distant.

But should he arrive there in time? He had reason to think so. Dombrowski and his Poles, placed around Bobruisk, would be sufficient to keep Ertell in check. As for Schwartzenberg, that general had been victorious; he was at the head of forty-two thousand Austrians, Saxons, and Poles, whom Durutte, and his French division, from Warsaw, would augment to more than fifty thousand men. He had pursued Tormasof as far as the Styr.

It was true that the Russian army of Moldavia had just formed a junction with the remnant of the army of Volhynia; that Tchitchakof, an active and resolute general, had assumed the command of fifty-five thousand Russians; that the Austrian had paused and even thought it prudent, on the 23d of September, to retire behind the Bug; but he was to have recrossed that river at Bresk-litowsky, and Napoleon knew no more.

At any rate, without a defection, which it was too late to foresee, and which a precipitate return could alone prevent, he flattered himself that Schwartzenberg, Regnier, Durutte, Dombrowski, and twenty thousand men, divided between Minsk, Slonim, Grodno, and Wilna—in short, that seventy thousand men; would not allow sixty thousand Russians to gain possession of his magazines and to cut off his retreat.