The Cost of Delay

Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow

"The weather was so fine and the temperature so mild that even the natives were amazed. It seemed as if even the seasons were conspiring to deceive the Emperor. Every day His Majesty remarked very pointedly, when I was present, that the autumn at Moscow was finer and even warmer than at Fontainebleau. He rode horseback every day, and I do not think he once went out without ironically comparing the weather and the temperature with that of France, or without adding, as he hummed one of the old airs to which he adapted catch-phrases or apt verses: "A traveller lies with the greatest of ease" - A beau mentir qui vient de loin. Then, for fear that this allusion was not sufficiently pointed, he would sometimes add, remarking on the bright sunshine, "So this is the terrible Russian winter that Monsieur de Caulaincourt frightens children with."

- Armand de Caulaincourt, With Napoleon in Russia (1935) pp. 139-140.

For more on the ensuing debacle, click here.