Page:Julian Niemcewicz - Notes of my Captivity in Russia.djvu/40

12 gaiety among them. We had heard nothing from Poninski, and at about nine o'clock in the morning, the whole of our little army, amounting nearly to five thousand eight hundred men, with twenty-one field-pieces, started. At four o'clock in the afternoon, we left the large wood, and approached the village of Macieiowice,—General Kosciuszko and myself, with some Light-dragoons, proceeded before the advanced-guard, and were not long in seeing the army of the enemy, which lay encamped along the bank of the Vistula, as far as the eye could reach. Although the great distance did not allow us to perceive objects distinctly, the general view was most imposing; the rays of the setting sun reflected from the arms of the dense columns of infantry; the neighing of horses, and the buzz of this armed multitude, filling the air with a dull and confused noise, had in them something really terrible. We threw our skirmishers into the wood, which extended beyond our flanks, and our advanced posts engaged