Roguet bowed his head wearily and walked his horse away from the Emperor towards the dark lines of his men still facing the distant clusters of Cossacks. Napoleon stared at the enemy with loathing for a moment. The Cossacks were like animals. There had been many reports of the atrocities they had perpetrated on stragglers or small groups of prisoners they had captured. Only the day before a group of foragers had been rounded up and forced into a barn which was then set on fire. As a consequence the imperial headquarters had issued an order that no prisoners were to be taken. In any case, Napoleon reflected, there were too few men to guard them and no food to feed them with. Literally no food. Already there were rumours that some had turned to cannibalism. Napoleon’s expression turned to disgust at the thought. He did not believe the rumours, he told himself. Men did not do such things.

He shook off the thought and turned towards Smolensk one last time as the dusk closed in across the land, dimming the snowfields to ever darker shades of grey.

‘Good luck, Ney,’ he muttered, and turned his mount, spurring it into a trot in the snow alongside the column as he rode to catch up with his headquarters.

The vanguard marched hard, driven on by the knowledge that it was in a race to reach Orsha before the enemy could take the town and block the crossing. Two days after the battle the Imperial Guard reached the town and hurriedly set about fortifying the bridgehead across the Dnieper. Over the next days the rest of the main column trickled in and took shelter in the small town, crowding into the buildings and barns to get out of the bitter wind and snow. The small stocks of food in Orsha were soon exhausted and the rear elements of the Grand Army were forced to beg whatever scraps they could from their comrades. There was still no sign nor any word from Ney, and once the last of the stragglers had passed into the town the sentries kept an anxious watch for the first of the Cossacks that were sure to be close behind.

The staff of the imperial headquarters had taken over the town’s corn exchange and were gathered in the main hall where a fire burned in a vast stone fireplace constructed from blocks of granite. The road to Warsaw had been cut once again and the latest reports from the cavalry patrols brought more bad news.

‘The Russians have sent columns round our flanks to cut us off from the far bank of the Berezina,’ Napoleon told his staff and senior commanders as they stood before him. He paused before delivering the next blow. ‘They have taken Minsk.’