At Borodino the Russian redoubts turned out to be mere sketches of fortifications, and the trenches shallow and unprotected; yet the Russians defended them so obstinately that, according to Labaume’s description, the centre of the Great Redoubt presented an inexpressibly terrible picture. The dead were piled upon one another several deep. The Russians were falling on all sides, but they refused to retire; in the space of one square league there was not a spot that was not covered with dead or wounded. Further on were heaps of dead among scattered fragments of guns, lances, helmets, cuirasses, or cannon-balls covering the ground like hailstones after a violent storm. The most awful spectacle of all was to be seen in the trenches—poor wounded wretches, who had fallen one on the top of the other, lay weltering in their blood, groaning in the most heart-rending manner and praying for death. “Not only,” says Fezensac, “had the French army never before suffered such losses as at Borodino, but, what was worse, never before had the spirit of the soldiery been so utterly broken as after that battle. The irrepressible gaiety of the French soldiers vanished, and instead of the songs and jokes in which it had been their wont to forget the fatigues of their long marches, a death-like silence reigned in the camp. Even the officers, it appears, utterly lost heart. Such depression is intelligible when it follows defeat, but it was certainly not to be expected after a victory which had thrown open the gates of Moscow.” According to Russian authorities, whose accounts are completely at variance with Napoleon’s own assertions, the Emperor lost more than 50,000 men in the attack, including 1200 officers and 49 generals; while the Russian losses, dead and wounded, amounted to 40,000, including 1732 officers and 18 generals. The enemy’s losses must have been increased by the fact that during the three days in which they were engaged on the field of battle they had nothing to eat and drink but roots and water. Ségur admits a loss of 40,000 men, and says that the army which entered Moscow numbered 90,000. The division of Cuirassiers, which had comprised 3600 horses all told, numbered but 800 on that day. The situation in which the French army found itself within the walls of Moscow was not by any means an enviable one. It had neither bread nor meat, although the tables were spread with sweetmeats and syrups. Valuable wine was readily exchanged for blankets; and a fur-coat could be bartered for any quantity of sugar and coffee. The camp presented the appearance not of a military bivouac, but rather of a market where every soldier, turned tradesman, was busy selling the most valuable articles at the most moderate prices; where all the men, though living in the open field exposed to rain and storm, ate from porcelain plates, drank out of silver goblets, and were surrounded with the costliest luxuries of the period.