Napoleon regarded the left flank as the weakest part of the Russian position, and after a careful survey of the heights of Borodino he decided to concentrate all his efforts on this point, i.e. on an attack with his own right. Marshal Davout then requested the assistance of Poniatowski, whose forces were too weak for independent action, to help in outflanking the enemy. He proposed to move before daybreak with Poniatowski’s troops and his own five divisions, numbering 35,000 men, under cover of the woods on which the Russians were resting, get behind them, along the old Smolensk road, and fall suddenly on the rear of the left flank. He pointed out that while the Emperor was leading the attack from the front, he would move rapidly from redoubt to redoubt and from reserve to reserve, disperse any force he found on the Mozjaisk road, annihilate the Russian army, and finish the war at a single blow. This proposal furnished one more proof that Davout was the best tactician of all the marshals trained in the school of Napoleon. If his daring project had been carried out, it would most probably have thrown the Russian army into utter confusion. But Napoleon, after listening attentively to what the Marshal had to say, replied after a few minutes of silent deliberation—“No, it is too unheard-of a manœuvre; it will lead me away from my main object, and make me lose a great deal of time.” The Duke of Eckmühl, confident in the correctness of his views, still persisted. According to Ségur, he undertook to execute the whole manœuvre by six o’clock in the morning. He would answer, he said, for the utter rout of the Russians. But Napoleon, evidently displeased at the Marshal’s persistence, interrupted him with—“Oh, you are always urging these flanking movements; it is too hazardous!” So Marshal Davout said no more, and, fortunately for the Russian army, left without gaining his point. Kutuzof was not slow to divine the enemy’s intentions. When the battle began, in the face of the enemy’s fire he moved Boggavut’s corps across from the right flank, against which Prince Eugène was making an ineffectual demonstration, to the support of the Second Army, and in his turn alarmed the French by a movement round their left flank with Uvarof’s cavalry and the Cossacks. Both sides appreciated the fact that the Semyonof heights were the real key to the position.