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Between the fire and his quarters there was an extensive vacant space, then the Moskwa and its two quays; and yet the panes of the windows against which he leaned felt already burning to the touch, and the constant exertions of sweepers, placed on the iron roofs of the palace, were not sufficient to keep them clear of the numerous flakes of fire which were continually lighting upon them.
Murat, whom twelve hours' fighting had not exhausted, again came to ask him for the cavalry of his guard. "The enemy's army," said he, "is passing the Moskwa in haste and disorder; I wish to surprise and extinguish it." The emperor repelled this sally of immoderate ardour; afterwards he dictated the bulletin of the day.
The soldiers after that marched on without a murmur, struck at once with the magnanimity of their commander, and the ingenuity of his device to remind them of their duty. Brief Explanation. A French colonel, in taking a redoubt from the Russians on the Moskwa, lost twelve hundred of his men, more than one half of whom remained dead in the entrenchment which they had so energetically carried.
The Kremlin, as it now stands, is a large collection of palaces, public buildings, and churches, situated on the crown of a high bank or eminence on the left side of the Moskwa River, nearly in the centre of the city. It is surrounded by a high embattled wall, forming something of a triangle, about a mile in circumference, through which are several massive gateways.
THE day after the battle of the Moskwa, I was with the Emperor in his tent which was on the field of battle, and the most perfect calm reigned around us. It was a fine spectacle which this army presented, calmly re-forming its columns in which the Russian cannon had made such wide gaps, and proceeding to the repose of the bivouac with the security which conquerors ever feel.
Count Auguste de Caulaincourt was a young man full of courage, who had left his young wife a few hours after his marriage to follow the French army, and to find a glorious death at the battle of La Moskwa. He was governor of the pages of the Emperor, and had married the sister of one of his charges.
They then brought to mind our useless waste of lives before Smolensk, Junot's inaction at Valoutina, and they maintained, "that in spite of all these losses, Russia would have been completely conquered on the field of battle of the Moskwa, if Marshal Ney's first successes had been followed up.
On his right was the winding valley of the Kolotza, an affluent of the Moskwa, and before his centre and left the ground sloped down to a stream. On this more exposed side the Russians had hastily thrown up earthworks, that at the centre being known as the Great Redoubt, though it had no rear defences.
The marshals stood in silence, and looked at him in an embarrassed manner. Laying aside the pen, and rising, he held up the paper on which he had written, and motioned to Marshal Ney. "Here, Prince de la Moskwa," said Napoleon, "read to the marshals what I have written." "You have willed it so," said Napoleon, when Ney had finished.
Then ensued a touching scene between the Emperor and the Prince of Eckmuhl, who, wounded at the Moskwa, had himself borne back in order to attempt to save the Emperor, or to die with him.
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