At the moment when Brock, with his force of a few hundred men attacked Detroit, Napoleon with two hundred thousand men moved upon Smolensk and the Russian army. August 15, he celebrated his fête-day on the banks of the Dnieper; and while Hull was surrendering the fort of Detroit, the Russian army, hardly in better humor than the Ohio militia, were preparing to abandon Smolensk to save themselves from Hull’s fate. Napoleon took possession of the town August 18, but failed to destroy the Russian army, and then, turning away from St. Petersburg, pursued his retreating enemy toward Moscow. The battle of Borodino, or Moscowa, followed, September 6, and the French army entered Moscow September 14. There it remained more than a month. During these weeks of alarm and incessant fighting, the Czar still found time to think of American affairs. The influence of Count Roumanzoff, though lessening every day, still controlled the regular course of foreign relations. September 21 Roumanzoff sent for Adams, and said that the Emperor had been much concerned to find the interests of his subjects defeated and lost by the new war, and it had occurred to him that perhaps an arrangement might be more easily made by an indirect than by a direct negotiation: he wished to know whether an offer of mediation on his part would meet with any difficulty on the part of the United States.[14] Adams replied that his Government could not fail to consider it as a new evidence of the Czar’s friendship, but suggested that there was a third party to be consulted,--the British government. Roumanzoff answered that he had already sounded the British minister, who had written to Lord Castlereagh on the subject. The British minister, lately arrived in Russia, was not a person calculated to aid Roumanzoff. Lord Cathcart, who had been chosen by Castlereagh for the post of ambassador at St. Petersburg, was best known as the commander of the Copenhagen expedition in 1807. Some Americans might perhaps remember that he had served in America during the Revolutionary War. A well-informed writer in the London “Times,” who belonged to the Wellesley interest, seemed to doubt Lord Cathcart’s qualifications for his new post. “He is only better fitted for it than the horse he rides,” was the criticism;[15] but the better he had been fitted for it, the worse he would have suited Roumanzoff’s purpose, for his first object could be no other than to overthrow Roumanzoff and thwart his policy. No serious support of Russian mediation could be expected from him. He began his career by seeking access to the Emperor through other channels than the chancellor.[16]