258 SOLDIERS AND SAILORS wounded. Ney fought like a common soldier in the very thickest of the con- flict. The Russian positions were at last carried, and Ney sent to the emperor for reinforcements with which to complete the victory. The emperor had only his guard in reserve, and refused this request. " If there should be another bat- tle to-morrow," he said, " with what am I to fight it ? " " Let him go back to Paris, and play at emperor, and leave fighting to us," cried Ney, scornfully, when he heard this message. Had his request been granted, and the Imperial Guard been hurled into the conflict at the right moment, it seems probable that the Russian army would have been entirely destroyed. As it was, they drew oflf in good order, under cover of night, and Kutusof even had the effrontery to claim a victory. For his services during this memorable day Ney received the title of Prince of the Moskowa. The result of the battle of Borodino was to leave Moscow at the mercy of the invaders, and a barren prize indeed it proved to them. In the horror of the fearful retreat from the ruined city the fame of Ney reached its highest point. Nothing in all history surpasses the record of his indomitable courage and cheer- fulness in the most hopeless situations, and amid the most frightful hardships. As in Spain, he had the command of the rear-guard, and the soldiers, preyed upon alike by the Cossacks and the cold, died in the path like flies. Without artillery and without cavalry, they yet succeeded, day after day, in obstructing their pursuers. Ney was on foot in the midst of them, carrying a musket and fighting like the humblest private. But at Smolensk where the army expected to find everything, and really found nothing they stayed too long, and on re- suming their march found the Russians barring their path. Napoleon and the Imperial Guard cut their way through. The first and fourth corps succeeded, after a desperate conflict, in evading their enemies, but Ney, who had received orders to blow up the fortifications of Smolensk before leaving the town, found himself with some eight thousand men cut off from the main body of fugitives by an army of 50,000 Russians. He attacked them as though the numbers were equal, lost in a short time nearly half his little force, and was obliged to fall back. Being called upon to surrender, he answered, proudly, "A Marshal of France never surrenders," and gave the order, as night approached, to retreat toward Smolensk, which was indeed the only way open to him. The soldiers were in despair. Ney alone did not lose heart. In the gathering dusk they came upon a small rivulet. The marshal broke the ice and watched the flow of the current beneath. "This must be a feeder of the Dnieper," he said. "We will follow it, and put the river between us and our enemies." This they suc- ceeded in doing; but were obliged to leave their wounded, their artillery, and their baggage upon the other side. Ney had left Smolensk on November 1 7th, with about eight thousand men. On the 20th he joined Napoleon, who had given him up for lost with somewhere about one thousand. Napoleon, hearing that he was come, fairly leaped and shouted for joy, exclaiming, " I have three hundred millions of francs in the Tuileries I would have given them all rather than have lost such a man."
