the fir-trees with their funereal green, standing motionless and huge, their black boughs outspread, filling the heart with sadness and foreboding. “Everything, even their weapons which had been serviceable at Malo Jaroslavetz, but were now only contemptible, hindered the wretched soldiers in their progress. They seemed insufferably heavy; when the miserable men stumbled, their muskets would fall and break or become buried in the snow. They would rise to their feet without them—not that they lost them intentionally—hunger and cold had snatched them from their grasp. Many had their hands frost-bitten, while their fingers clung stiff and numbed to their muskets. “Then came the sixteen-hour nights. With the snow everywhere, covering everything, there was no place to lean against, to stop at, to sit or rest upon, there was no spot in which they could dig for roots to stay the pangs of hunger or obtain fuel for fires. The troops did their best to form a camp, but the wind cared for nobody, and rudely scattered all their preparations. The fir-wood was covered with hoar-frost and would not take fire, fresh snow fell from the sky, the old snow melted beneath, and even when, at infinite pains, the fire was kindled, it could not be kept alight. At last something like a fire might be obtained, and officers and soldiers began to prepare their wretched supper of scraps of lean meat from horses slaughtered or dead of fatigue, with perhaps a few spoonfuls of oatmeal soaked in melting snow. Next day a heap of frozen soldiers marked the position of the camp-fires, and all around lay thousands of dead horses!” On the day on which winter broke in all its horror on the unfortunate French army, Count Daru stopped the head-quarters staff on the march and made a secret communication to the Emperor. It appeared that an _estafette_, the first that had arrived for a whole week, had reached the army with news of Malet’s conspiracy. On the march, under the public gaze, Napoleon received the news with the utmost _sang-froid_, but afterwards in camp he expressed the greatest wrath. He was still more angry at Smolensk, where the army, after all its expectations of rest, found an insufficiency both of quarters and provisions. The Emperor was simply furious. “I never saw him,” says his servant Constant, “forget himself to such an extent. He sent for the Intendant; I could hear his cries from the adjoining room. Napoleon gave orders that this officer should be shot, and it was only by grovelling at the Emperor’s feet that the wretched man managed to get off.” The calamities of this stage of the retreat were accentuated by the fact that no notice had been received of the return of the army, and officials at Smolensk and elsewhere, taken by surprise, completely lost their heads when they saw these crowds of ravenous fugitives storming and plundering their stores without much advantage to themselves, but to the ruin of all who came after them.