The armed peasants and Cossack detachments checked foraging operations and cut off detachments. At Smolensk, indeed, there was a strong garrison. A provisional administration had been organised, on paper, under the superintendence of M. de Villeblanche; but the town was ruined and nearly deserted. General Charpentier could organise strong foraging parties, but had no artisans to construct barracks and bakeries, or to manufacture clothing and equipment. From Smolensk to Gzhatsk there was hardly any protection for the road. Baraguay d’Hilliers declared that, after providing for the necessary garrisons of the posts, he could dispose of only 600 men, in three detachments, for police and foraging operations on a line of some 200 miles! As to establishing markets as Napoleon ordered, he frankly exposed the utter absurdity of the idea. For removing wounded and forwarding supplies there were not a fifth of the vehicles required. [Illustration: MARSHAL VICTOR, DUKE OF BELLUNO Commander of the 9th French Army Corps From the painting by Gros at Versailles] Detachments on the march to Moscow straggled for many miles north and south of the high-road in order to forage, and it was impossible to keep them in hand. One officer, in charge of a convoy, reported that his escorts melted away one after another; and he entered Moscow alone! The marauders committed nameless atrocities, which amply explain and to some extent justify the terrible retaliations of the peasants during the retreat. It is an ungrateful task to allude to these horrors, but one hideous incident given by Löwenstern must be mentioned, if only to afford a proper impression of what a state of warfare in Napoleonic days implied. Among the Russian leaders of irregulars Captain Figner early acquired a terrible reputation for blood-thirsty cruelty towards his French and Polish foes, to whom he gave no quarter in battle, and whom, when captured, he massacred without pity. His savagery was strongly reprobated in the Russian army, except in the case of a number of fierce spirits whom the sufferings of their country had maddened. Even the wild irregulars looked askance at Figner; and for the execution of his savage orders he could not always rely upon them.