Thus run two stanzas of a poem written in the manner of the famous “John Gilpin” and published in London. If it is not particularly good poetry it is true history. At first Napoleon hoped by marching southward to find territory less devastated and poverty-stricken than that through which he had passed. In this he was frustrated by a conflict which took place between Eugène’s corps and the army under Kutusoff. The Viceroy of Italy captured Malojaroslavetz only to find that he had won a barren victory at extreme cost, leaving the Russians posted securely on the hills at the back of the ruined town. The Emperor had wished to push on; the enemy’s position prevented it. Had he known that Kutusoff had previously arranged to retreat if he were attacked, Napoleon would not have hesitated. He weighed the matter in his own mind and discussed it with his Marshals, finally coming to the conclusion that his army must of necessity retire by the road along which it had advanced, or in the expressive terms of Labaume, via “the desert which we ourselves had made.” Werestchagin’s picture of the retreat conveys some idea of the tragedy. There is the stern and unbending Emperor wearing the crown of fir cones which he wore at this time, and followed by his dejected staff and the empty carriage. We can almost hear the crunch of the snow as it powders under foot, catch the low murmurings of the disillusioned men as they trudge along the uneven roadway, and feel the icy grip and stinging smart of the cruel wind. And yet the artist’s conception, vivid beyond question, cannot bring home to us a tithe of the terrors and misery of that awful march. Horses stumbled and perished, men fell by the wayside and died of hunger and cold, some flung away their arms in sheer despair, others tramped on like machines, cognisant only of the bitter blast which froze their moustaches and whistled through their tattered garments. According to Labaume, the first snow fell on the 6th November, when the army was tramping towards Smolensk comforted by the thought that in three days they would reach their destination and secure some kind of rude shelter, “when suddenly the atmosphere, which had hitherto been brilliant, was clouded by cold and dense vapours. The sun, enveloped by the thickest mists, disappeared from our sight, and the snow falling in large flakes, in an instant obscured the day, and confounded the earth with the sky. The wind, furiously blowing, howled dreadfully through the forests, and overwhelmed the firs already bent down with the ice; while the country around, as far as the eye could reach, presented unbroken one white and savage appearance.