Mortier, relieved from his anxiety for the Emperor, redoubled his efforts to arrest the conflagration. His men cheerfully rushed into every danger. Breathing nothing but smoke and ashes- canopied by flame and smoke and cinders-surrounded by walls of fire that rocked to and fro, and fell with a crash amid the blazing ruins, carrying down with them roofs of red-hot iron- he struggled against an enemy that no boldness could awe or courage overcome.
Those brave troops had heard the tramp of thousands of cavalry sweeping to battle, without fear; but now they stood in still terror before the march of the conflagration, under whose burning footsteps was heard the incessant noise of falling houses and palaces and churches. The continuous roar of the raging hurricane, mingled with that of the flames, was more terrible than the thunder of artillery; and before this new foe, in the midst of this battle of the elements, the awe-struck army stood powerless and affrighted.
When night again descended on the city, it presented a spectacle the like of which had never been seen before, and which baffles all deion. The streets were streets of fire;the heavens a canopy of fire; and the entire body of the city a mass of fire, fed by a hurricane that sped the blazing fragments in a constant stream through the air. Incessant explosions, from the blowing up of stores of oil and tar and spirits, shook the very foundations of the city, and sent vast volumes of smoke rolling furiously toward the sky. Huge sheets of canvas on fire came floating, like messengers of death, through the flames; the towers and domes of the churches and palaces, glowing with red-heat over the wild sea below, then tottering a moment on their bases, were hurled by the tempest into the common ruin.
Thousands of wretches, before unseen, were driven by the heat from the cellars and hovels, and streamed in an incessant throng along the streets. Children were seen carrying their parents, the strong the weak; while thousands more were staggering under loads of plunder which they had snatched from the flames. These, too, would frequently take fire in the falling shower, and the miserable creatures would be compelled to drop them and flee for their lives. Oh, it was a scene of woe and fear inconceivable and indescribable! A mighty and closely- packed city of houses and churches and palaces, wrapped from limit to limit in flames, which are fed by a whirling hurricane,is a sight this world has seldom seen.
But this was within the city. To Napoleon without, the spectacle was still more sublime and terrific. When the flames had overcome all obstacles, and had wrapped everything in their red mantle, that great city looked like a sea of rolling fire, swept by a tempest that drove it into billows. Huge domes and towers, throwing off sparks like blazing firebrands, now disappeared in their maddening flow, as they rushed and broke high over their tops, scattering their spray of fire against the clouds. The heavens themselves seemed to have caught the conflagration, and the angry masses that swept it rolled over a bosom of fire.
Columns of flame would rise and sink along the surface ofthis sea, and huge volumes of black smoke suddenly shoot into the air, as if volcanoes were working below. The black form of the Kremlin alone towered above the chaos-now wrapped in flame and smoke-again emerging into view-standing amid this scene of desolation and terror, like Virtue in the midst of a burning world, enveloped but unscathed by the devouring element. Napoleon stood and gazed on the scene in silent awe. Though nearly three miles distant, the windows and walls of his apartment were so hot that he could scarcely bear his hand against them. Said he, years afterwards,-"It was the spectacle of a sea and billows of fire, a sky andclouds of flame; mountains of red rolling flames, like immense waves of the sea, alternately bursting forth and elevating themselves to the skies of flame above. Oh! it was the most grand, the most sublime, the most terrific sight the world ever beheld!"- J. T. HEADLEYWORDSabstain, refrain. apartment, room. baffles, defies. betokened, foretold. canopied, over-arched. conflagration, burning.
convulsively, spasmodically. devoted, doomed. discovered, found. elevating, raising. enveloped, enshrouded. exertion, effort.
explosions, reports. faltering, tottering. fatigue, exhaustion. firebrands, fagots. forebodings, portents. hovels, cellars.
hurricane, tempest.
indescribable, beyond the power of words.
issuing, emerging. occupants, inhabitants. ominous, inauspicious. pillage, plunder. relieved, delivered. reluctantly, unwillingly. rigid, strict.
sentinels, watchmen. solitude, loneliness. staggering, reeling. suffocated, choked. surface, bosom. unparalleled, unequalled. unscathed, unharmed.
volcano, burning mountain.
NOTES
① MOSCOW.-Napoleon, having humbled Austria and Prussia, resolved to strike a terrible blow at Russia, because she refused to join him in the plan he had devised for the ruin of English commerce. In 1812 he led into that country an army of 500, 000 men,-a larger army, it is said, than, up till that time, had ever been led into the field by a single general. After gaining several victories, he advanced to Moscow in September. What took place there is described in the lesson. The severity of winter compelled him to begin a precipitate retreat, during which his grand army was all but totally destroyed.