“I will never sign a peace as long as a single foe remains on Russian ground,” the Emperor Alexander had said when he heard that Napoleon had crossed the Nieman. He kept his word in spite of all Napoleon’s overtures. The French position grew worse from day to day. No food, no fresh supplies, the cold increasing, the army disheartened, the number of Russians around Moscow growing larger. Nothing but a retreat could save the remnant of the French. It began on October 19th, one hundred and fifteen thousand men leaving Moscow. They were followed by forty thousand vehicles loaded with the sick and with what supplies they could get hold of. The route was over the fields devastated a month before. The Cossacks harassed them night and day, and the cruel Russian cold dropped from the skies, cutting them down like a storm of scythes. Before Smolensk was reached, thousands of the retreating army were dead. [Illustration: NAPOLEON AFTER THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN.] Napoleon had ordered that provisions and clothing should be collected at Smolensk. When he reached the city he found that his directions had not been obeyed. The army, exasperated beyond endurance by this disappointment, fell into complete and frightful disorganization, and the rest of the retreat was like the falling back of a conquered mob. There is no space here for the details of this terrible march and of the frightful passage of the Beresina. The terror of the cold and starvation wrung cries from Napoleon himself. “Provisions, provisions, provisions,” he wrote on November 29th from the right bank of the Beresina. “Without them there is no knowing to what horrors this undisciplined mass will proceed.” And again: “The army is at its last extremity. It is impossible for it to do anything, even if it were a question of defending Paris.” The army finally reached the Nieman. The last man over was Marshal Ney. “Who are you?” he was asked. “The rear guard of the Grand Army,” was the sombre reply of the noble old soldier. Some forty thousand men crossed the river, but of these there were many who could do nothing but crawl to the hospitals, asking for “the rooms where people die.” It was true, as Desprez said, the Grand Army was dead. It was on this horrible retreat that Napoleon received word that a curious thing had happened in Paris. A general and an abbé, both political prisoners, had escaped, and actually had succeeded in the preliminaries of a _coup d’état_ overturning the empire, and substituting a provisional government. They had carried out their scheme simply by announcing that Napoleon was dead, and by reading a forged proclamation from the senate to the effect that the imperial government was at an end and a new one begun. The authorities to whom these conspirators had gone had with but little hesitation accepted their orders. They had secured twelve hundred soldiers, had locked up the prefect of police, and had taken possession of the Hôtel de Ville.