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This move, if successful, would not only win the day, but decide the campaign, by cutting off the French from their supplies coming from the south and driving them into the exhausted lands around Olmütz. Such was Weyrother's scheme, which enchanted the Czar and moved the fears of the veteran Kutusoff: it was expounded to the Russian and Austrian generals after midnight on December the 2nd.

"If that had been done, we should not have lost our best men at Wiazma, at the Wop, at the Dnieper, and along the whole road; in short, even now, Kutusoff, Wittgenstein, and perhaps Tchitchakof would not have had time to prepare more fatal days for us. "But why, in the absence of orders from Napoleon, had not that precaution been taken by the commanders, all of them kings, princes, and marshals?

All hope of passing between the Russian armies was thus lost: driven by the armies of Kutusoff and Wittgenstein upon the Berezina, there was no alternative but to cross that river in the teeth of the army of Tchitchakoff, which lined its banks.

The illness and finally the death of the obstinate old Kutusoff had stopped the intrigues of the Slav peace party, hitherto strong in the Russian camp: and the command now devolved on Wittgenstein, a more energetic man, whose heart was in his work. But the most inspiring influence was that of Blücher. The staunch patriot seemed to embody the best qualities of the old régime and of the new era.

At that solemn moment, Kutusoff, in a firm and impressive tone, addressed his sovereign, and informed him of the loss of his capital.

In front of this ancient capital of the czars it met at length on the 7th of September the living enemy it had so long sought. Bagration, Kutusoff, and Barclay, occupied with their army positions in front of it in order to prevent the approaching foe from entering holy Moscow. You know the particulars of the bloody battle on the Moskwa.

The merchant class, which possessed great influence on account of its wealth, complained of a system of temporizing which left men in uncertainty, and compromised the honor of the Russian arms; and it was thought unpardonable in the Emperor that he had bestowed his confidence on a foreigner when old Kutusoff, with the blood and the heart of a Russian, was given a secondary position.

He accordingly raises a storm which is most powerfully described. Napoleon bewails the inglorious fate for which he seems to be reserved. "Oh! thrice happy," says he, "those who were frozen to death at Krasnoi, or slaughtered at Leipsic. Oh, Kutusoff, bravest of the Russians, wherefore was I not permitted to fall by thy victorious sword?"

Kutusoff saw the peril of massing so great a force there and weakening the centre, but sadly held his peace. Napoleon had already divined their secret. In his order of battle he took his troops into his confidence, telling them that, while the enemy marched to turn his right, they would expose their flank to his blows.

He had orders to make the artillery saw the trunnions of the cannon left behind, and bury them; to destroy the ammunition, to drive all the stragglers before him, and to blow up the towers which surrounded the city. Kutusoff, meanwhile, was waiting for us at some leagues distance from thence, and preparing to cut in pieces successively those remnants of corps thus extended and parcelled out.