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The Bobr was likely to prove a very awkward customer for us; for she mounted one 9-inch and one 6-inch gun, which, although they were a long way from being up-to-date, were still quite good enough to out-range the Japanese field-guns and severely pepper our left, which occupied the ground at the head of Hand Bay.
Comparatively weak German forces held the front in the region of the Niemen, the Bobr, and the Narew, safeguarding such Russian territory as had been seized by the Germans, and protecting East Prussia against invasion.
It read: "The line occupied by us in the east runs from the Pilica, along the Rawka and Bzura to the Vistula. From there it runs in an easterly direction through the region to the north of Przasnysz south of Mystinez, south of Kolno to the north of Lomza, and strikes the Bobr at Mocarce.
They virtually remained in their strongly fortified positions along the Narew, the Bobr, and the Niemen, except for the sending out of occasional attacking columns against the German lines lying opposite to them. These forward thrusts were made especially from the fortresses Grodno and Kovno, and the fortified place Olita.
General Wrède was unable to do this, so Corbineau left him and headed for Dokshitsy and the headwater of the Beresina, then, going down the right bank of the river, he intended to reach Borisoff, cross the bridge and take the road to Orscha to look for Oudinot's Corps, which he thought was in the region of Bobr.
Meanwhile Marshal Oudinôt, who was already marching towards Minsk, totally ignorant of what had happened, halted on the 21st between Bobr and Kroupki, when in the middle of the night General Brownikowski arrived to announce to him his own defeat, as well as that of General Dombrowski; that Borizof was taken, and that the Russians were following hard at his heels.
The winter battles of the Mazurian Lakes had forced the armies at the northern end of the Russian right flank back into their great fortresses Kovno and Grodno, and behind the line of the Niemen and the Bobr.
But if we had ships, so, too, had the Russians, in the shape of the gunboat Bobr and five small steamers in Hand Bay, on the side of the isthmus opposite to Kinchau Bay, the Nanshan Heights being between them, so that each was hidden from the sight of the other.
Concerning the captures of this day, the German Great Headquarters reported: "On the 21st of February the remnants of the Tenth Army laid down their arms in the forest of Augustowo after all attempts of the Russian commander of this army, General Sievers, to cut a way out for the encircled four divisions by means of those parts of his army which remained to him after escaping over the Bobr to Grodno failed with extremely heavy losses."
The Russian army of the south had seized the bridge at Borisoff on which Napoleon's safety depended, and Oudinot vainly struggled to wrest it back. The Muscovites burnt it under his eyes. Such was the news which Napoleon heard at Bobr on November 24th.
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