Still the viceroy made his defence good, till night, the friend of the overmatched, approached to protect him; when, at the head of his division, diminished to one half, he quitted the high-road, leaving his fires burning to mislead the enemy, and, gaining the open fields, accomplished, with great loss and ineffable fatigue, his junction with Napoleon at Krasnoi, which he reached by a circuitous route. The challenge of a sentinel during this delicate manœuvre might have been utter destruction--and in fact they did encounter such a challenge. They were saved from the consequences by a ready-witted Pole, who, answering the sentinel in Russian, imposed silence on him, pretending that they were the corps of Owaroff, employed upon a secret expedition. At length, upon the next morning (17th November,) Eugene reached the headquarters of his father-in-law, who had been very anxious on his account. When the diminished division of Eugene was united to that of the Emperor, they did not exceed 15,000 men in total amount. Yet on being joined by Eugene, the active genius of Napoleon, in these most disadvantageous circumstances, displayed its ascendency. He had caused General Roguet, with a detachment of the Young Guard, in the night between the 15th and 16th, to beat up the quarters of a Russian detachment, which approached his own too closely; and having thus taught the hunters to respect the lair of the lion, he embraced the audacious resolution of remaining at Krasnoi in defiance of the Russian army, till the detachments of Davoust and Ney should again join him. Whatever had been his reasons for separating from these divisions, he now saw the necessity of once more uniting his forces.