The evening of the 1st of December closed in. The allied movement towards their left was still continuing, and Napoleon, after renewing his orders, again visiting his parks and ambulances and satisfying himself by his own observation that all was in order, threw himself on a bundle of straw and slept. About eleven o’clock he was awakened and told that a sharp attack had been made on one of the villages occupied by his right, but that it had been repulsed. This further confirmed his forecast of the allied movements, but, wishing to make a last reconnaissance of his enemy’s position, he again mounted, and, followed by Junot, Duroc, Berthier, and some others of his staff, he ventured between the two armies. As he closely skirted the enemy’s line of outposts, in spite of several warnings that he was incurring great risk, he, in the darkness, rode into a picquet of Cossacks. These sprang to arms and attacked him so suddenly that he would certainly have been killed or taken prisoner if it had not been for the devoted courage of his escort, which engaged the Cossacks while he turned his horse and galloped back to the French lines. His escape was so narrow and precipitate that he had to pass without choosing his way the marshy Goldbach stream. His own horse and those of several of his attendants--amongst others Ywan, his surgeon, who never left his person--were for a time floundering helpless in the deep mud, and the Emperor was obliged to make his way on foot to his headquarters past the fires round which his soldiery were lying. In the obscurity he stumbled over a fallen tree-trunk; and it occurred to a grenadier who saw him, to twist and use some straw as a torch, holding it over his head to light the path of his sovereign.