Kutuzof, as has been said, was not alone responsible for Napoleon’s escape from Russia. The Russian Commander-in-Chief took a thoroughly sound view of the position of the French Emperor; and in this connection his conversations with one of his prisoners, a man occupying a high rank in the administrative branch of the French army, are full of interest. Kutuzof told him that he had thoroughly studied Napoleon’s character, and was sure that when once he had crossed the Niemen he would be tempted to extend his conquests indefinitely. “We have given him plenty of space to exhaust and dissipate his army, to give strategy, famine, and frost free play. What blindness is it that has prevented Napoleon alone from recognizing the trap that was so evident to everybody else?” The Field-Marshal expressed astonishment at the ease with which Napoleon had been induced to stay in Moscow and encouraged in his absurd hopes of concluding an honourable peace, when he was helplessly caught in the toils. “Napoleon’s intelligence,” he remarked, “has deteriorated—the whole campaign shows that. It is a pity he did not think of going further than Moscow, we would have given him another 5000 versts to conquer.” He admitted that it would have been hard to imagine anything more dangerous for Russia than Napoleon’s original plan of remaining in Smolensk, covering Poland, and renewing the war in the spring. But he was convinced that the plan did not originate with Napoleon himself, for he was too much accustomed to short campaigns to devote two whole years to the conquest of a single empire. “One must know but little of Napoleon,” said Kutuzof, “to imagine him capable of the patient execution of an enterprise demanding time, caution, and tedious elaboration of detail.” “When I left the Field-Marshal,” says this French officer, “he expressed the conviction that Bonaparte would inevitably be crushed at the passage of the Beresina.” * * * * * Beyond the Beresina, the retreat became more disastrous than ever. It was a headlong flight in which there was no longer any pretence of order. The fugitives behaved, in the most literal sense, like wild beasts. Muravyof, Fenschaw, Chichagof, and many others affirm that they saw the French devouring their dead comrades. They often found them in outhouses seated round a fire on the bodies of the dead, cutting out the best portions to roast and eat. When, on one occasion, a Russian officer expressed his horror and disgust, one of these cannibals replied with perfect equanimity, “Of course this stuff isn’t very nice, but at any rate it’s better than beastly horse-flesh.” In the hospital at Minsk the French convalescents, for want of tables, played cards on the dead and stiffened bodies of their comrades, and the walls of the room were ornamented with the bodies of the dead dressed in fantastic costumes and with their faces daubed, by way of jest, with coal and brick-dust.