This expedient, moreover, was repugnant to Napoleon, whose nature inclined him much more to the cause of kings than to that of nations.  He employed it but carelessly.  Subsequently, at Moscow, he received several addresses from different heads of families.  They complained that they were treated by the nobility like herds of cattle, which they might sell or barter away at pleasure.  They solicited Napoleon to proclaim the abolition of slavery, and in the event of his doing so, they offered to head partial insurrections, which they promised speedily to render general.

These offers were rejected.  We should have seen, among a barbarous people, a barbarous liberty, an ungovernable, a horrible licentiousness:  a few partial revolts had formerly furnished the standard of them.  The Russian nobles, like the planters of St. Domingo, would have been ruined.  The fear of this prevailed in the mind of Napoleon, and was confessed by him; it induced him to give up, for a time, all attempts to excite a movement which he could not have regulated.

Besides, these masters had conceived a distrust of their slaves.  Amidst so many dangers, they distinguished this as the most urgent.  They first wrought upon the minds of their unfortunate serfs, debased by all sorts of servitude.  Their priests, whom they are accustomed to believe, imposed upon them by delusive language; they persuaded these peasants that we were legions of devils, commanded by Antichrist, infernal spirits, whose very look would excite horror, and whose touch would contaminate.  Such of our prisoners as fell into their hands, remarked that these poor creatures would not again make use of the vessels which they had used, and that they reserved them for the most filthy animals.

As we advanced, however, our presence would have refuted all these clumsy fables.  But behold! these nobles fell back with their serfs into the interior of the country, as at the approach of a dire contagion.  Property, habitations, all that could detain them, and be serviceable to us, were sacrificed.  They interposed famine, fire, and the desert, between them and us; for it was as much against their serfs as against Napoleon that this mighty resolution was executed.  It was no longer, therefore, a war of kings that was to be prosecuted, but a war of class, a war of party, a war of religion, a national war, a combination of all sorts of war.

The emperor then first perceived the enormous magnitude of his enterprise; the farther he advanced, the more it became magnified.  So long as he only encountered kings, to him, who was greater than all of them, their defeats were but sport; but the kings being conquered, he had now to do with people; and it was another Spain, but remote, barren, infinite, that he had found at the opposite extremity of Europe.  He was daunted, hesitated, and paused.

At Witepsk, whatever resolution he might have taken, he wanted Smolensk, and till he should be at Smolensk, he seemed to have deferred coming to any determination.  For this reason he was again seized with the same perplexity:  it was now more embarrassing, as the flames, the prevalent epidemic, and the victims which surrounded him, had aggravated every thing; a fever of hesitation attacked him; his eyes turned towards Kief, Petersburgh, and Moscow.