Figner himself declared that he acted from conscientious motives. While on one of his expeditions he surprised a marauding party--evidently consisting of Frenchmen and Poles--in a village which they had sacked. In the church they had penned a number of women and girls, and outraged and tortured them with horrible barbarity, crucifying them about the building--partly in order the more easily to gratify their brutal lust, partly no doubt from sheer love of cruelty. Into this hideous orgy burst Figner and his Cossacks. Most of the ravishers were captured. The unhappy victims--such of them as survived--were rescued; and there and then, before the desecrated altar, the Russian leader swore a solemn oath never to spare a Frenchman. He shut his prisoners up in the church and fired it over them; and thereafter, until he was killed in the following year, Frenchmen were to him but as vermin to be exterminated. It is futile to comment upon the moral ethics of his determination. It is only evident that in Russia, as in Spain, the brutality and lust of the French conquerors sowed the seeds of a terrible harvest of vengeance. In spite of the disorder in Napoleon’s rear there is no doubt that the French numbers rose steadily during the halt. Presumably the stragglers therefore--or such of them as survived the Cossacks and armed peasants--drifted in eventually. But it is hardly necessary to point out that such a method--or lack of method--of marching was the worst possible preparation for a retreat in which strict discipline and careful order would be before everything necessary. What Napoleon’s own plans were is extremely doubtful. The troops generally anticipated that they would winter in Moscow--but this of course implies nothing. Count Daru certainly suggested doing so, positively stating that to his knowledge the supplies were sufficient and shelter ample. But on the other hand the lines of communication were already seriously threatened, and though the army in Moscow might have been preserved it must have lost most of its horses, and Napoleon would have been cut off from France for several months. The Emperor is credited by Fain with the intention of advancing upon St. Petersburg. This project was a most extraordinary one, and it passes human comprehension how Napoleon could have imagined it. It is useless to give it in detail. The essential part is that the army is to march upon Velikii Luki, about 90 miles north-east of Polotsk, and 300 from Moscow, through a fertile country (it is actually quite the reverse), and thus threaten St. Petersburg--200 miles farther on, over barren and sparsely-peopled country. The time allowed for accomplishing the movement appears to be about fifteen days! Farther comment is surely unnecessary.