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a few times after scrutinizing the hand and lower arm very carefully.
    It hurt a great deal but Orlov gritted his teeth and bore it with no obvious sign of distress. Kusminsky noticed the sweat on his forehead and the tight muscles of his face and decided not to untie the bandages. He helped Orlov dress again and arranged his arm in a more comfortable position in the sash which he was still using as a sling. 'That's not very good,' he observed. 'It's too rough—it's chafing your neck.' Orlov was quite well aware of this.
    'We must try to find something we can use for bandages when we l'each a village,' he said. 'We've pitifully little with us.'
    'Yes,' agreed Kusminsky. 'There was very little available in Smolensk. If the French haven't brought plenty with them, they'll find their men bleeding to death for lack of dressings. We need more blankets too. It may be hot as hell during the day, but it's damned cold at night.'
    Orlov opened the leather wallet on his cross belt and pulled out the map Danilov had given him at Genera l Barc lay's headquarters. He spread it out on the ground where all three of them could look at it and pointed out the road towards which they were heading. It ran straight from west to east towards Kaluga for nearly two hundred miles but no owns were marked along it, and very few villages. The map was small scale and Orlov suspected it was not very accurate.
    'The main problem,' he said, 'is that, we are near enough to 1 he assumed line of march of the French army to be within range of their foraging parties and therefore of the area which the Cossacks will be clearing. That means that for at least a hundred miles, until this road diverges far enough from the Moscow road to make the French foragers ignore it, probably all the buildings will be burnt and all the people fled. That's always assuming that th e French continue to advance.' 
    'Do you think they will?' asked Kolniev.
    'Unless they're prepared to spend the winter in what remains of Smolensk,' replied Orlov. 'I think that may have been their intention but Smolensk no longer provides enough shelter for two thin cats, let alone an army the size of Bonaparte's. If he's going to hold what he's gained so far, lie must advance, for he can't stay where he is, or go back. 11 is army has no organization for a line of supply—it has always lived on the country be fore. The Smolensk area is devast ated: it can't support his army until the spring. He must go on, either to Moscow or to Petersburg, and I think it will be Moscow.'
    'Moscow!' Kolniev was horrified. 'Surely even Barclay will stand and fight before that! It was bad enough to let them take Smolensk, but you can't seriously think the French could be allowed to go as far as Moscow!'
    Orlov noted the 'even Barclay' with an inward sigh. So many of the Line officers seemed quite unable to appreciate Barclay's many good qualities. 'Look,' he said, 'what purpose would it have served to hold Smolensk? The French would simply have besieged the place and gone on hammering at it until our army was either destroyed or forced to surrender. The days of impregnable fortresses passed long ago, and Smolensk never qualified as one anyway. Strategy in Russia must lie in movement, in using the vast size of the country —Suvorov taught us that.
    Our army must be mobile, not tied down to the defence of one city, not even Holy Moscow. Let the cities go—they're only wood and stone—burn them and let them go! They can be rebuilt, but the army can't. Once the army is pinned down, it can be destroyed, and then we're lost. As long as the army exists and is free to move, we can't be beaten. Even Bonaparte can't take and occupy every town in Russia, or keep his army fed and equipped in a devastated desert. Let him go to Moscow, let him sit there in a burning city surrounded by an empty wilderness until he rots. Let him spend the winter there, and see how his Grande Armee likes that!' He had become quite impassioned during