employed in gliding about, like the Gouls of eastern fable, and in consummating this terrible sacrifice. The fact was, that Rostopchin, the governor, had emptied the prisons, on condition of their miscreants burning the French out of the Imperial city; some police officers were left to combine them, and never was misdeed better fulfilled than this visitation of revengeful patriotism! On the third night the Kremlin took fire. It was rumoured that it was undermined; all were in a paroxysm of terror save Napoleon, he smiled incredulously, but this report afterwards proved too true; he therefore quitted the palace, and on the 20th September, the fire being subdued, he again returned and remained there until the 19th of October. No answer having arrived from Alexander, Lauriston was sent to Kutusoff with another letter for the Czar; the Russian, though he declined granting a passport to any French emissary, offered to forward the letter by his own Aid-de-camp; an armistice was subsequently entered into. Napoleon was compelled to leave Moscow because of the approaching winter. The armistice was afterwards broken, and the Russians pursuing the French slew immense numbers of the army; upwards of 40,000 bodies were found in the ensuing spring in the bed of the river Beresina, and multitudes died of cold and hunger
