Note 144 — Chapter LIX

"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.