Smolensk was now the thought dearest to every heart; and, buoyed with the hope of rest and food, the army tottered westwards as it had panted eastwards through the fierce summer heats with Moscow as its cynosure. The hope that clung about Smolensk was but a cruel mirage. The wreck of that city offered poor shelter; the stores were exhausted by the vanguard; and, to the horror of Eugène's Italians, men swarmed out of that fancied abode of plenty and pounced on every horse that stumbled to its doom on the slippery banks of the Dnieper. With inconceivable folly, Napoleon, or his staff, had provided no means for roughing the horses' shoes. The Cossacks, when they knew this, exclaimed to Wilson: "God has made Napoleon forget that there was a winter here." Disasters now thickened about the Grand Army. During his halt at Smolensk (November 9th-14th), Napoleon heard that Victor's force on the Dwina had been worsted by the Russians, and there was ground for fearing that the Muscovite army of the Ukraine would cut into the line of retreat. The halt at Smolensk also gave time for Kutusoff to come up parallel with the main force, and had he pressed on with ordinary speed and showed a tithe of his wonted pugnacity, he might have captured the Grand Army and its leader. As it was, his feeble attack on the rearguard at Krasnoe only gave Ney an opportunity of showing his dauntless courage. The "bravest of the brave" fought his way through clouds of Cossacks, crossed the Dnieper, though with the loss of all his guns, and rejoined the main body. Napoleon was greatly relieved on hearing of the escape of this Launcelot of the Imperial chivalry. He ordered cannon to be fired at suitable intervals so as to forward the news if it were propitious; and on hearing their distant boomings, he exclaimed to his officers: "I have more than 400,000,000 francs in the cellars of the Tuileries, and would gladly have given the whole for the ransom of my faithful companion in arms."[275] Far greater was the danger at the River Beresina. The Russian army of the south had seized the bridge at Borisoff on which Napoleon's safety depended, and Oudinot vainly struggled to wrest it back. The Muscovites burnt it under his eyes. Such was the news which Napoleon heard at Bobr on November 24th. It staggered him; for, with his usual excess of confidence, he had destroyed his pontoons on the banks of the Dnieper; and now there was no means of crossing a river, usually insignificant, but swollen by floods and bridged only by half-thawed ice. Yet French resource was far from vanquished. General Corbineau, finding from some peasants that the river was fordable three leagues above Borisoff, brought the news to Oudinot, who forthwith prepared to cross there. Napoleon, coming up on the 26th, approved the plan, and cheeringly said to his Marshal, "Well, you shall be my locksmith and open that passage for me."[276]