Part 35

=Rostopchin=: (Ros-top-chen').

=Kutusoff=: commander-in-chief of the Russian army.

=Muscovite=: a native of Muscovy, an old name for Russia.

Rostopchin denied, in a work which he published, that he set fire to the city. He insisted that it was done by the French, together with the rabble of Moscow. It is now thought that the governor began the work of destruction, which was completed partly by the Russians and partly by the French.

=Cossacks=: a race of people inhabiting the south of Russia. On account of their great skill in horsemanship they are largely employed in the Russian army as cavalry.

=Moskwa=: the French often spoke of the battle of Borodino as the Battle of the Moskwa, though it is not on that river, but on the Kologa, a tributary of it. The accounts of the number killed differ.

=Kolomna gate=: a gate leading to Kolomna, a town on the Moskwa River.

=Miloradovitch=: a Russian general.

=Mazeppa=: a Pole, who having been detected in a crime was bound to the back of a wild horse and carried by the animal to the country of the Cossacks. There he became head of the Cossack forces, and when Peter the Great attempted to seize that country, Mazeppa formed an alliance with Charles XII. of Sweden for the independence of the Cossacks.

=Dorogomilow=: the name of a quarter of the city.

=Daru=: a distinguished French author and statesman who accompanied Napoleon in his Russian campaign.

=Boyars=: nobles, or men of rank.

=Bivouac= (biv-wak'): to encamp without tents or shelter.

=Scythians=: a race of fierce barbarians, formerly inhabiting the country north and east of the Black Sea. Napoleon intimates that these men are their descendants.

=Strelitzes=: a body of military guards that revolted under Peter the Great.

=Postern-gate=: a small rear or side gate.

=Lithuania=: a province of Russia bordering on the Niemen and hence near supplies.

=Witepsk=: a point passed on the march to Moscow, about midway from the Niemen; here the Russian general, Wittgenstein, appears to have been stationed.

=Old Guard=: the emperor's body-guard, composed of a large force of veterans.

"Napoleon also took measures for relieving the unfortunate of all classes. He ordered lists to be made of all the citizens whom the conflagration had deprived of the means of subsistence, opened houses of refuge for them, and supplied them with food."

=Tilsit and Erfurt=: at these places Napoleon had negotiated treaties, greatly in favor of the French, with the Czar of Russia.

=Expresses=: messengers.

=Armistice=: a temporary suspension of hostilities.

=Partisans=: soldiers detached to intercept convoys of provisions and the like.

=Invalides=: one of the great public buildings at Paris; a soldiers' home and hospital. Napoleon is buried here.

=Aid-de-camp=: an officer who carries orders and directs movements for a general.

=The viceroy=: Prince Eugene.

The indecisive battle of Malo-jaroslavetz, a town about fifty miles southwest of Moscow, compelled Napoleon to give up his original plan of retreat, which would have taken him through an unexhausted country to the southward, and forced him to go back to the north, retracing his steps by the route he came.