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Through it the strange path led, and here in the gloom the horror of this awful place again came upon me and I could scarce bring myself to enter the narrow defile.
Ney attacked, with forty thousand men, the Russian vanguard under Winzingerode, which, after gallantly defending a defile near Weissenfels, made an orderly retreat before forces far their superior in number. The French, on this occasion, lost Marshal Bessieres.
As the buffalo in countless throngs find their certain way in the transient pasturage on the prairies, along the fresh banks of the rivers, and up every valley and green defile of the mountains, so the salmon, at their allotted seasons, regulated by a sublime and all-seeing Providence, swarm in myriads up the great rivers, and find their way up their main branches, and into the minutest tributory streams; so as to pervade the great arid plains, and to penetrate even among barren mountains.
We sat under a tree watching the tribe defile across the water-course: then remounting, after a ride of two miles, we reached a ground called Kuranyali , upon which the wigwams of the Nomads were already rising.
The troops at once began to defile. Behind them long convoys hurried to escape the French. Five sixths of the population had quitted the town when the columns of those wounded in the battle of Borodino appeared at their doors, and they were obliged to crowd their hospitals and churches with 15,000. By abandoning their capital the Russians entrusted these wretches to the pity of their enemies.
After moving for seven or eight miles among the hills which surround Akasha, the cavalry passed through a long, sandy defile, flanked on either side by rocky peaks and impracticable ravines. As the head of the column was about to debouch from this, the advanced scouts reported that there was a body of Dervishes in the open ground in front of the defile.
At length some French cannon came up, and they alone were capable of making a breach in this living fortress. Newerowskoi hastened to reach a defile, where Grouchy was ordered to anticipate him; but Murat, deceived by a false report, had diverted the greatest part of that general's cavalry in the direction of Elnia; Grouchy had only 600 horse remaining.
He knew, too, that General Beck with a considerable force was hastening to join him; but he feared that prudent counsels might at the last moment prevail in the French camp, or that the news of the king's death might reach them, and he therefore left the defile open and allowed the French army to gain the plain and form up in order of battle facing him, without offering the slightest opposition or firing a single gun.
One comes that loves you. He comes from the world that has given you your strength, your insight, your greatness, your wonderful goodness. Open to him, as it says in the Song of Solomon ... He wouldn't even say, as it goes on there, 'I have washed my feet how shall I defile them? If my luck was good, I shouldn't even be let in to where his Excellency could hear my voice! Well, all right!"
His first fighting had been at Strumitza station, where he defeated the Bulgarians and so assured himself of possession of Demir Kapu defile, a cleft in the mountains ten miles in length and from which, had they held it, the Bulgarians could easily, with a comparatively small force, have prevented any further advance.
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