Meantime, the attack commenced on Smolensk, but the place was defended with the same vigour as on the day before. The field-guns were found unable to penetrate the walls; and the French lost four or five thousand men in returning repeatedly to the attack. But this successful defence did not alter Barclay's resolution of evacuating the place. It might no doubt have been defended for several days more, but the Russian general feared that a protracted resistance on this advanced point might give Napoleon time to secure the road to Moscow, and drive the Russian armies back upon the barren and exhausted provinces of the northwest, besides getting betwixt them and the ancient capital of Russia. In the middle of the night, then, while the French were throwing some shells into the place, they saw fires beginning to kindle, far faster and more generally than their bombardment could have occasioned.[136] They were the work of the Russian troops, who, having completed their task of carrying off or destroying the magazines, and having covered the flight of the inhabitants, had now set the dreadful example of destroying their own town, rather than that its houses or walls should afford assistance to the enemy. [Sidenote: SMOLENSK.] When the Frenchmen entered Smolensk, which they did the next morning, 18th August, most of the town, which consisted chiefly of wooden houses, was yet blazing--elsewhere they found nothing but blood and ashes.[137] The French troops were struck with horror at the inveterate animosity of the Russians, and the desperation of the resistance which they met with; and all began to wish a period to a war, where there was nothing to be gained from the retreating enemy, except a long vista of advance through an inhospitable wilderness of swamps, pine-forests, and deserts; without provisions, and without shelter; without hospitals for the sick, and dressings for the wounded; and without even a shed where the weary might repose, or the wounded might die.