Meantime, as a preparation for the march, the Emperor limited all the officers, even of the highest rank, to one carriage; and ordered one half of the waggons to be destroyed, that all the horses and draught-oxen might be applied to getting forward the ammunition and artillery. There is reason to think these commands were very imperfectly obeyed. Another order, marking strongly the exigencies of the time, respected such officers as still retained their horses. The cavalry, under Latour Maubourg, had, since leaving Smolensk, been reduced from 1800 to 150. To supply this deficiency, about 500 officers, all who remained mounted, were formed into a body called the Sacred Squadron, to attend upon the Emperor's person. Grouchy and Sebastiani had the command of this body, in which officers formed the privates, and generals of division served as captains. But it was not long ere fatigue and want of forage, no respecters of rank or condition, dismounted the greater part of the Sacred Squadron.[214] The army thus in some small degree re-organised, and refreshed by the better quarters and nourishment which they had received since the battle of Krasnoi, now plunged into the immense pine forests which conceal the course of the Beresina, to disguise their adventurous march the more completely from the enemy. They were moving towards Borizoff, when loud shouts from the forest at first spread confusion among their ranks, under the idea of an unexpected attack; but this fear was soon changed into joy, when they found themselves on the point of uniting with the army of Victor and Oudinot, amounting to 50,000 men, complete and provided with every thing. Yet whatever the joy on the part of the grand army, it was at least equalled by the astonishment of their comrades, when they recognised the remains of the innumerable host which had left them in such splendid equipment, and now returned in the guise, and with the gait and manner, of spectres raised from a churchyard. They filed past their happier comrades with squalid countenances, their uniform replaced by women's pelisses, or what various rags each could pick up; their feet bare and bleeding, or protected by bundles of filthy rags instead of shoes. All discipline seemed gone; the officer gave no command, the soldier obeyed none. A sense of common danger led them to keep together and to struggle forward, and mutual fatigue made them take repose by the same fires; but what else they had learned of discipline was practised rather by instinct than by duty, and in many cases was altogether forgotten.[215] The army of the two Maréchals, however, though scarce recovered from their astonishment, joined the ranks of the grand army, and, as if disorder had been infectious, very soon showed a disposition to get rid of that military discipline, which their new associates had flung aside.--Leaving Napoleon on his advance to the river, it is now necessary to notice the motions of the Russians.