During one of these reviews in the courtyard of the Kremlin, a rumour was circulated among his suite that artillery fire was to be heard in the direction of the advance-guard. At first no one dared to call Napoleon’s attention to the fact; but Duroc summoned up courage to inform him of the news, and all observed that the Emperor was seriously disturbed. He soon recovered himself and was about to continue the review, when an aide-de-camp from Murat came galloping up with the information that the King’s first line had been taken by surprise and routed; that his left flank had been surrounded under cover of the woods, his right attacked, and his communications cut. Twelve guns, twenty caissons, and a number of baggage-wagons had been captured, two generals killed, and three to four thousand men lost. He added that the King himself had been wounded, but he had saved the remnants of his command by means of repeated attacks on the overwhelming forces of the enemy, who had just begun to occupy the only road by which he could retreat. Murat’s report was that “the advance-guard no longer exists, for the exhausted remnant of it could certainly not survive more than one more battle with the enemy, who have become bolder than ever.” This was on October 18. The war was being renewed, said the French—it was just beginning, said Kutuzof. At the news of this attack, Napoleon recovered all his former energy. He issued a thousand orders, embracing the most important movements and the most trivial details, and before nightfall the whole army was in motion. At dawn on the 19th, the Emperor himself left Moscow, with a bold declaration that he was moving on Kaluga—“And woe to him who tries to bar my way.” He left Moscow by the old Kaluga road, meaning to reach the frontier of Poland by way of Kaluga, Medyn, Yelnya, and Smolensk. Rapp, who accompanied him, observed that it was getting late in the year and winter would overtake them on the way; but the Emperor replied that the soldiers must be given time to rest and recover, and the sick must be moved from Mozjaisk, Moscow, and the Kolotzky monastery to Smolensk. Then he pointed to the clear blue sky, and asked if they did not see the star of his fortune in the sun above them and in the continued fine weather. “The sinister expression of his countenance,” says an eye-witness, “gave the lie direct to these words of hope and simulated confidence.”