Even the cold and cautious spirit of Koutousoff could not miss the opportunity occasioned by this halt of 15,000 men, in the face of perhaps three times their number. But neither the persuasions of his own officers, nor the reproaches of Sir Robert Wilson, the English commissioner, could prevail on the old general to attack with the vivacity which the occasion demanded. He would only consent to wage a distant engagement with artillery. At daybreak on the 17th, Eugene, whose forces the preceding battle had altogether disabled, was directed to take the advance towards Liady, the next miserable stage of the French army, while Buonaparte drew his sword, and saying he had already played the Emperor, and must now once more be the general, led in person his 6000 guards, attended by Mortier at the head of 5000 soldiers more, to meet as great odds as it should please Koutousoff to despatch against him.[206] In the sort of battle which followed, the Russians acted with great caution. The name of Napoleon almost alone protected his army. The French suffered, indeed, from the fire of 100 pieces of artillery, and from charges of cavalry, which they had no means of answering or repelling; but though gaps were made in their line, and some of their squares were forced by the cavalry, yet neither success nor repulse could induce Koutousoff to hazard a serious attack upon Napoleon, for the purpose of altogether destroying the invader and his army. Even Boutourlin, a friendly critic, where the reputation of the old Russian general is concerned, regrets he had not taken the bold course of placing his army across the direct line of Buonaparte's retreat, when the French, overcome at once by physical suffering and moral depression, must, even supposing them equal in numbers, have been extremely inferior to their opponents. Upon the whole, Koutousoff seems to have acted towards Napoleon and the grand army, as the Greenland fishers do to the whale, whom they are careful not to approach in his dying agonies, when pain, fury, and a sense of revenge, render the last struggles of the leviathan peculiarly dangerous.