Firing began at six o’clock, and continued for twelve anxious hours. The contestants disputed the ground with such determination, each carrying and losing positions again and again, that at times it was difficult to say which army had the advantage. According to Labaume thirty of the Emperor’s generals were wounded, including Davout and Rapp, the former by being thrown from his horse as it fell dead, the latter by a ball which struck him on the hip. General Augustus de Caulaincourt, brother of the more celebrated Armand de Caulaincourt, Duke of Vicenza, after performing prodigies of valour in the Russian entrenchments, where the hardest fighting was done, was killed, as was General Montbrun but a little time before, while leading a similar attack. Prince Bagration afterwards died of the injuries he received, and many other Russian generals were more or less seriously wounded. The key of the position, the Russian entrenched battery, with its terrible heap of dead and dying, was at last captured by the French. The officer commanding it was about to throw himself on his sword rather than surrender, but was prevented in the nick of time by the victors, who took him prisoner. As Napoleon and his staff were surveying the field after the battle his horse stepped on a wounded man, whose groans attracted the rider’s attention. “It is only a Russian,” one of his attendants said, probably to allay Napoleon’s feelings rather than from want of sympathy. “After victory,” the Emperor retorted, “there are no enemies, but only men.” He was neither callous nor did he love war for its own sake. It was the result that pleased him, the humbling of the enemy, the addition of territory to the Empire, the driving of one more nail in England’s coffin. The maimed were ever his first care after battle. His besetting sin was an abnormal, and consequently unhealthy, ambition--the vice at which he had railed so much in his early days. Napoleon failed to use his 20,000 Guards at Borodino, why is still a matter of conjecture. Some writers maintain that it would have been foolish for him to use up his last reserves, others hold that had he flung them into the battle he might have annihilated the Russian army and saved himself the agonies which followed. The reason he gave was, “At 800 leagues from Paris one must not risk one’s last reserve.”