Still uneasy, however, he went at night through the ranks:  he was delighted to hear Kutusoff swear that he was at length going to fight; he triumphed on seeing all the Russian generals preparing for a terrible conflict; Beningsen alone had still his doubts on the subject.  The Englishman, nevertheless, considering that the position no longer admitted of falling back, at length lay down to wait for daylight, when about three in the morning a general order for retreat awoke him.  All his efforts were ineffectual.  Kutusoff had resolved to direct his flight southward, first to Gonczarewo, and then beyond Kalouga; and at the Oka every thing was by this time ready for his passage.

It was at that very instant that Napoleon ordered his troops to retire northward on Mojaisk.  The two armies therefore turned their backs on each other, mutually deceiving each other by means of their rear-guards.

On the part of Kutusoff, Wilson asserts, that his retreat was like a rout.  Cavalry, cannon, carriages, and battalions thronged from all sides to the entrance of the bridge, against which the Russian army was backed.  There all these columns, hurrying from the right, the left, and the centre, met, clashed, and became blended into so enormous and so dense a mass, that it lost all power of motion.  It took several hours to disentangle it and to clear the passage.  A few balls discharged by Davoust, which he regarded as thrown away, fell among this confused crowd.

Napoleon needed but to have advanced upon this disorderly rabble.  It was after the greatest effort, that of Malo-Yaroslawetz, had been made, and when he had nothing to do but to march, that he retreated.  But such is war! in which it is impossible to attempt too much or to be too daring.  One army knows not what the other is doing.  The advanced posts are the exterior of these two great hostile bodies, by means of which they overawe one another.  What an abyss there is between two armies that are in the presence of each other!

Besides, it was perhaps because the Emperor had been wanting in prudence at Moscow that he was now deficient in audacity:  he was worn out; the two affairs with the Cossacks had disgusted him:  he felt for his wounded; so many horrors disheartened him, and like men of extreme resolutions, having ceased to hope for a complete victory, he determined upon a precipitate retreat.

From that moment he had nothing in his view but Paris, just as on leaving Paris he saw nothing but Moscow.  It was on the 26th of October that the fatal movement of our retreat commenced.  Davoust with twenty-five thousand men remained as a rear-guard.  While he advanced a few paces, and, without being aware of it, spread consternation among the Russians, the grand army in astonishment turned its back on them.  It marched with downcast eyes, as if ashamed and humbled.  In the midst of it, its commander, gloomy and silent, seemed to be anxiously measuring his line of communication with the fortresses on the Vistula.