The whole of the French army was disappointed with the result of the battle, and with the want of energy displayed by Napoleon. Bessières was especially blamed; for, at the critical moment, when the Emperor was on the point of making up his mind to let the reserves be brought into action, the Marshal approached him and whispered in his ear—“Sire, do not forget that you are eight hundred leagues from your capital.” There are, however, some who take the opposite view. Chambrey, for instance, assures us that “the whole of the French army was astonished at the stubbornness with which this terrible battle was fought,” and Gourgot, in defending Napoleon, goes so far as to say, “If the ranks of the Guards had been thinned at the battle of Borodino, the remains of the French army, of which it was the pillar and pride during the retreat, would hardly have managed to reach the Niemen.” Of the Russian authorities, some find fault with Napoleon, and others are of opinion that he adopted the only possible course. “Nothing,” says Buturlin, “can justify Napoleon’s course in stopping the fight at three o’clock when a little further effort might have ensured a victory. The last Russian reserves had already gone into action, while on the side of the French neither the Old Guard nor the Young, nor any of their cavalry, amounting to over 20,000 men, had taken any part in the battle. There is no doubt that if Napoleon had made use of the twenty-three battalions and twenty-seven squadrons of which this select force consisted, he would have utterly routed the Russians, and compelled them to spend the remaining four hours of the day in continual retreat instead of preparing for attack.” Danilevsky asserts that the French, after occupying the redoubt on the Semyonof hills, so far from pressing the Russians, who had fallen back on another position in the immediate neighbourhood, withdrew all along the line for the night; and reminds his readers of the fact, that until eleven o’clock on the following day the French made no attempt to renew the assault, but awaited an attack on the part of the Russians, and only advanced at last when their opponents began to retire.[6] He expresses an opinion that for Napoleon’s refusal to use the Young Guard to support the cavalry in breaking through our left flank, our army was indebted to the movement made on the left by Uvarof’s cavalry,—that is to say, to a movement ordered by Kutuzof himself. We may add that neither Uvarof nor the Cossacks did all that might have been expected from them. Had the latter attacked the French more boldly in the rear, plundered their baggage, and generally caused confusion in that quarter, as they had every opportunity of doing, Napoleon would in all likelihood have had to send his reserves not to the front but to the rear; and the result would probably have been to demoralize, and perhaps to spread panic throughout the whole of the French army.