'Exactly, my dear wiseacre. Lestocq and his Prussians, and we must move to the right and cover their march across our rear.' Kalitkin suddenly drew his sabre with a rasp and pointed it across the shallow valley. 'There! See, those French pigs are ahead of us! They will try and harry the Prussian flank ...'

I told you they were the best light cavalry in the Grand Army.'

'You go and tell Bennigsen that the squadrons of Piotr Kalitkin have saved Mother Russia again ... and if he gives me a division I will win the whole damned war ...' He stood in his stirrups and bawled an order. This time the whole mass of the Cossacks moved forward and the staff-officer wheeled his horse aside to let them pass. For a moment he remained alone on the ridge to watch. The trot changed to a canter and then to a gallop; the lance points were lowered, the pennons flickering like fire as the dark wave of horsemen swept over the frozen marshes bordering the river, and crashed into the ranks of the French hussars. The enemy swung to meet them, their breath steaming below their fierce moustaches and their hair braided into dreadlocks beneath their rakish shakos. The staff-officer pulled his horse round and spurred it towards the headquarters of the Russian army at Anklappen.

Night fell early, the short winter afternoon expiring under heavy clouds and the smoke of battle. The French attack failed, largely due to the timely arrival of General Lestocq's Prussians and the late appearance of Ney: Napoleon had received the worst drubbing of his career, but Lasalle's hussars had had their revenge, and Kalitkin's Cossacks had been pushed back beyond the village of Schloditten, to bivouac and lick their wounds. It was past midnight when Kalitkin had posted his vedettes, rolled himself in his cloak and lain down in the snow. A few moments later he was roused as one of his men brought in a strange officer, wearing an unfamiliar uniform and raging furiously in a barbarous French at the Cossack trooper whose sabre point gleamed just below the prisoner's chin.