Every morning the regiments started in order from their bivouacs; but scarcely had they proceeded a few steps, before their widening ranks became lengthened out into small and broken files; the weakest, being unable to follow, dropped behind:  these unfortunate wretches beheld their comrades and their eagles getting farther and farther from them:  they still strove to overtake, but at length lost sight of them, and then sank disheartened.  The roads and the margins of the woods were studded with them:  some were seen plucking the ears of rye to devour the grain; and they would then attempt, frequently in vain, to reach the hospital, or the nearest village.  Great numbers thus perished.

But it was not the sick only that separated from the army:  many soldiers, disgusted and dispirited on the one hand, and impelled by a love of independence and plunder on the other, voluntarily deserted their colours; and these were not the least resolute:  their numbers soon increased, as evil begets evil by example.  They formed bands, and fixed their quarters in the mansions and villages adjacent to the military road.  There they lived in abundance.  Among them there were fewer French than Germans; but it was remarked, that the leader of each of these little independent bodies, composed of men of several nations, was invariably a Frenchman.

Rapp had witnessed all these disorders:  on his arrival, his blunt honesty kept back none of these details from his chief; but the emperor merely replied, “I am going to strike a great blow, and all the stragglers will then rally.”

With Sebastiani he was more explicit.  The latter reminded him of his own words, when he had declared to him, at Wilna, that “he would not cross the Duena, for to proceed farther this year, would be hurrying to infallible destruction.”

Sebastiani, like the others, laid great stress on the state of the army.  “It is dreadful, I know,” replied the emperor:  “from Wilna, half of it consisted of stragglers; now they form two-thirds; there is, therefore, no time to be lost:  we must extort peace; it is at Moscow.  Besides, this army cannot now stop:  with its composition, and in its disorganization, motion alone keeps it together.  One may advance at the head of it, but not stop or go back.  It is an army of attack, not of defence; an army of operation, not of position.”

It was thus that he spoke to those immediately about him; but to the generals commanding his divisions, he held a different language.  Before the former, he manifested the motives which urged him forward, from the latter he carefully concealed them, and seemed to agree with them as to the necessity of stopping.  This may serve to explain the contradictions which were remarked in his own language.

Thus, the very same day, in the streets of Smolensk, surrounded by Davoust and his generals, whose corps had suffered most in the assault of the preceding day, he said, that in the capture of Smolensk he was indebted to them for an important success, and that he considered that city as an excellent head of cantonments.