[138] "Napoleon slowly proceeded towards his barren conquest. He inspected the field of battle. Melancholy review of the dead and dying! dismal account to make up and deliver! The pain felt by the Emperor might be inferred from the contraction of his features and his irritation; but in him policy was a second nature, which soon imposed silence on the first."—Ségur, tom. i., p. 238.
[139] "In the passage through its massive walls, Count Lobau exclaimed, 'What a fine head for cantonments!' This was the same thing as advising the Emperor to stop there; but he returned no other answer to this counsel than a stern look."—Ségur, tom. i., p. 244.
[140] Ségur, tom. i., p. 250.
[141] Ségur, tom. i., p. 242; Jomini, tom. iv., p. 105.
[142] "Napoleon, on the following day, visited the places where the action had been fought, and gazing with an angry look on the position which Junot had occupied, he exclaimed, 'It was there that the Westphalians should have attacked! all the battle was there! what was Junot about?' His irritation became so violent, that nothing could at first allay it. He called Rapp, and told him to 'take the command from the Duke of Abrantes:—he had lost his marshal's staff without retrieve! this blunder would probably block the road to Moscow against them; that to him, Rapp, he should intrust the Westphalians.' But Rapp refused the place of his old companion in arms; he appeased the Emperor, whose anger always subsided quickly, as soon as it had vented itself in words."—Ségur, tom. i., p. 259; Rapp, p. 191.
[143] Jomini, tom. iv., p. 99; Ségur, tom. i., p. 255; Rapp, p. 192; Fourteenth Bulletin of the Grand Army.
[144] "When Napoleon learned that his men had proceeded eight leagues without overtaking the enemy, the spell was dissolved. In his return to Smolensk, the jolting of his carriage over the relics of the fight, the stoppages caused on the road by the long file of the wounded, who were crawling or being carried back, and in Smolensk by the tumbrils of amputated limbs going to be thrown away at a distance, in a word, all that is horrible and odious out of fields of battle, completely disarmed him. Smolensk was but one vast hospital, and the loud groans which issued from it drowned the shout of glory which had just been raised on the fields of Valoutina."—Ségur, tom. i., p. 264.
[145] Ségur, tom. i., p. 304.
[146] "Napoleon quietly employed himself in exploring the environs of his headquarters. At the sight of the Gjatz, which pours its waters into the Wolga, he who had conquered so many rivers, felt anew the first emotions of his glory; he was heard to boast of being the master of those waves destined to visit Asia—as if they were going to announce his approach, and to open for him the way to that quarter of the globe."—Ségur, tom. i., p. 308.
[147] Eighteenth Bulletin of the Grand Army.