The size of the city was diminished by the retrenchment of nearly one-third at the northern end, which brought the enceinte more nearly to a square form.
The old ramparts and bastions (excluding the circuit of the citadel of 1591, now in great part demolished, in the south-east) make an enceinte of about 41 m., but the enclosed area is not all occupied by streets and houses.
Each of the sixteen gates of the city is protected by a semi-circular enceinte, and is surmounted by a high tower built in galleries and provided with countless loopholes.
The well-known passage of Lucian (Piscator, 47) cannot be regarded as decisive for any of the theories advanced, as any portion of the old enceinte dismantled by the Persians may have retained the name in later times.
The Russians marched in two columns, which lost touch of one another, and as it was quite impossible for either to engage the French singlehanded, they both retired again towards Smolensk, where with an advanced guard in the town itself - which possessed an oldfashioned brick enceinte not to be breached by field artillery alone - the two columns reunited and deployed for action behind the unfordable Dnieper.