“Davout,” says Ségur, “entered Orcha with 4000 men, all that remained of 70,000! The Marshal lost all his personal belongings; he had no linen, and was literally dying of hunger. When he was offered a piece of bread he positively leaped upon it; when they gave him a handkerchief and he wiped his face for the first time for many days, it was covered with hoar-frost. ‘A man must be made of iron,’ cried the Marshal, ‘to stand such privations! There are such things as physical impossibilities; there is a limit to human endurance, and that limit we have long since passed!’” Ney was made of very different metal. When Napoleon refused to let him have the Guards for a final attack in the plains of Borodino, he did not hesitate to proclaim aloud, that “if the Emperor is tired of fighting, let him take his d——d way to the Tuileries, and leave us to do what is necessary.” Amid the universal despair and confusion of the retreat, Ney proved himself not only the “bravest of the brave,” as he had always been, but an obedient and efficient officer—he was the true hero of the retreat of the Grande Armée. Of a remarkably strong constitution, Ney was a man of action, not of sentiment. Highly characteristic was his answer to a wounded man who besought him to save him. “What would you have me do?” said he. “You are but one of the victims of the war—_voilà tout_!” When Ney was told of the death of the young de Noailles, he answered, without moving a muscle—“Well, well, his turn has come; it is better that we should lament his death than that he should lament ours.” The following incident is equally characteristic of the man. At Smolensk Ney was abandoned by Marshal Davout, and lost almost all his troops, artillery, and baggage. When, by circuitous roads, through bogs and forests, he overtook Napoleon with a handful of men, and the Duke of Eckmühl began to excuse his conduct, Ney merely replied—“I have not accused your Grace of anything. God sees us, and He is your Judge.” “Ney saw,” says Ségur, “that some one must bear the brunt of the retreat, and of his own free will he accepted the post of danger, undertaking to cover the rear of the army.”