“When the flame at length is raised, officers and soldiers prepare around it their sad meal, composed of lean and bloody fragments of flesh, torn from wornout horses, and, for a very few, some spoonfuls of rye flour diluted with snow–water. The next day soldiers, laid stone–dead in circles, mark the bivouacs, and the ground about them is strewed with the bodies of many thousand horses. “From this day, men began to reckon less upon each other. In this army, lively, susceptible of all impressions, and inclined to speculate from its advanced civilization, disorder soon gained footing, discouragement and insubordination spread rapidly, the imagination wandering without bounds in evil as well as good. Henceforward at every bivouac, at every difficult passage, some portion of the yet organized troops detached itself, and fell into disorder. Yet there were some who resisted this mighty contagion: they were the officers, subalterns, and seasoned soldiers. These were extraordinary men; they encouraged themselves by repeating the name of Smolensk, which they felt they were approaching, and where everything had been promised to them. “Thus since this deluge of snow, and the redoubled cold which it announced, all, officers and soldiers alike, preserved or lost their strength of mind, according to their age, their character, and temperament. He of our chiefs, whom till then we had seen the strictest in maintaining discipline, now found himself no longer in his element. Thrown out of all his fixed ideas of regularity and method, he was reduced to despair by so universal a disorder, and judging sooner than others that all was lost, he felt himself ready to abandon all.”[213]