Winter was advancing. Ségur continues—“The Russians openly expressed their astonishment that we should appear so indifferent to the approach of their terrible winter. It was their natural ally; they grieved for us, and urged us to retreat. ‘In another fortnight,’ they said, ‘your nails will drop off, your weapons will fall out of your stiffened and half-frozen hands.’” Fain confirms these details—“The cold seems to be the only cause of future anxiety. But the veterans of the army, who have already learned, in the bogs of Pultusk and the ice-fields of Eylau, to brave the climate, hope to escape this time with the same good luck. Moreover, no calculation has been neglected in this matter, and all the probabilities are reassuring. It is usually only in December or January that the Russian winter displays all its severity. During November the thermometer seldom marks six degrees of frost, in a normal year. Observations made during the preceding twenty years confirm this statement.” On October 13 the Emperor saw the first fall of snow. “Let us hurry,” he said, “for in twenty days we must be in our winter quarters.” Napoleon repeats this sentence in Bulletin XXIV. Labaume is very emphatic in his remarks—“It is past all comprehension,” he says, “that Napoleon could be so blind and so obstinate as to remain in Russia when he saw that the capital on which he had relied was in ruins, and that winter was approaching.... Providence no doubt, in punishment of his pride, must have dulled his wits. Could he otherwise have imagined that the very men who had had the courage to destroy their homes would be weak enough to accept his onerous terms, and sign a peace on the flaming ruins of their cities?” “In proportion as our strength and energy fell,” says the same author, “so did the boldness of the Cossacks rise. It increased to such a pitch that they actually attacked an artillery convoy on its road from Viazma, and repeated the experiment on another artillery convoy coming from Italy. These Tartar hordes dashed in whenever they found a gap between our armies, and availed themselves of the advantages of their position to display the most impudent daring.” The King of Naples, whose cavalry had almost reached the vanishing point, daily implored that something should be done; that peace should be concluded or a retreat begun. But the Emperor was both deaf and blind. “The spell was broken at last!” exclaims Ségur, “and by a mere Cossack. This barbarian fired at Murat as he was visiting an outpost. Murat was highly indignant, and explained to Dorogomilovsky that an armistice that existed only to be broken was not worth prolonging.” [Illustration: _Bivouac Fire._]