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Beningsen was equally successful in persuading his own commander, and the leader of our vanguard; he sent in great haste for Lauriston, and had him conducted to the Russian camp, where Kutusoff was waiting for him at midnight. The interview began ill. Konownitzin and Wolkonsky wished to be present. This shocked the French general: he insisted that they should retire, and they complied.
He had not marched long, however, before he was forced to halt. At Griednewa, between Gjatz and Borodino, the high-road suddenly descends into a deep ravine, whence it again rises as suddenly to a spacious height, which Kutusof had ordered Konownitzin to defend.
Konownitzin was vanquished and retired; on the 5th his bloody track was followed to the vast convent of Kolotskoi, fortified as habitations were of old in those too highly vaunted Gothic ages, when civil wars were so frequent; when every place, not excepting even these sacred abodes of peace, was transformed into a military post.
Konownitzin, threatened on the right and left, made no other stand either at Kolotskoi or at Golowino; but when the advanced-guard debouched from that village, it beheld the whole plain and the woods infested with cossacks, the rye crops spoiled, the villages sacked; in short, a general destruction. By these signs it recognized the field of battle, which Kutusof was preparing for the grand army.
The same evening the viceroy rejoined Murat, and the next day they found the Russians in a new position. Pahlen and Konownitzin had united with Ostermann.
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