filled all the houses. Not a moment's rest was to be had; all were in
bivouac. They seemed wholly ignorant of the motions of the allies; for
the same troops who went out at one gate often returned before night at
another; so that there was an incessant marching in and out at all the
four principal avenues of the city. These movements of cavalry,
infantry, and carriages, ceased not a moment even during the night It
was very rarely that a troop of cavalry, sent out upon patrol or picket
duty, returned without having lost several men and horses, who were
invariably, according to their report, kidnapped by the Cossacks. Upon
the whole, all the troops with whom the French had any rencounters were
called by them _Cossacks_--a name which I have heard them repeat
millions of times, and to which they never failed to add, that "the
fellows had again set up a devilish hurrah."

The Cossacks are indisputably the troops of whom the French are most
afraid. With them, therefore, all the light cavalry who come upon them
unawares are sure to be Cossacks. In revenge for the many annoyances
which they were incessantly suffering from these men, they applied to
them the opprobrious epithet of _brigands_. Often did I take pains to
convince them that troops who were serving their legitimate sovereign,
and fighting under the conduct of their officers, could not be termed
banditti; my representations had no effect,--they were determined to
have some satisfaction for their disappointment in a thousand attempts
to master such enemies. Their vanity was far too great to suffer them to
do justice to those warriors; and they never would admit what thousands
had witnessed, namely, that thirty French horse had frequently run away
from two Cossacks. If Napoleon had twenty thousand Russian Cossacks in
his service, the French journalists and editors of newspapers would
scarcely be able to find terms strong enough to extol these troops; and
the French have just reason to rejoice that the emperor Alexander has no