United States or South Africa ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Where do you think, Anna?" he said, looking down at her as she stood by his side. "To Bobruisk," she murmured. "No." "Farther?" "Ay, a long way farther." Fear sprang into her soft eyes. Bobruisk was eighty-nine versts away, yet Ivan said they were going farther. "We we are not going to Minsk?" she cried. "Ay, and beyond Minsk!" "Ivan, tell me!" she grasped. "Tell me where we are going!"
The King of Westphalia was delayed a few days at Grodno by bad weather and other difficulties; thus Bagration, who had been ordered by the Czar to retire, was able to escape the meshes closing around him by a speedy retreat to Bobruisk, whence he moved northwards.
"He had a face like the boy to whom you gave the lucky pot," he said. "Did you notice it in the moonlight when the trooper struck him down?" "Yes," she answered. "I saw." They left Bobruisk next morning. They rode away on a great, puffing, snorting train that terrified Anna. The engineer turned a stopcock as they were passing the engine, and Anna screamed while Ivan nearly dropped the big trunk.
Hand in hand the big man and his wife walked down the street, their faces turned toward Bobruisk, Ivan balancing upon his head a heavy trunk that no other man in the village could have lifted. At the end of the street a stripling with bright eyes and yellow curls clutched the hand of Ivan and looked into his face. "I know what is sending you," he cried.
The advanced posts at Lyadi, Vinkowo, and Velij, opposite to those of Barclay and Bagration; for these two hostile armies, the one flying from Napoleon, across the Düna, by Drissa and Witepsk, the other, escaping Davoust across the Berezina and the Boristhenes, by way of Bobruisk, Bickof, and Smolensk, succeeded in forming a junction in the interval bounded by these two rivers.
It was therefore at a hundred leagues beyond Smolensk, in a more compact position, behind the morasses of the Berezina, it was to Minsk, that it was necessary to repair in search of winter-quarters, from which he was forty marches distant. But should he arrive there in time? He had reason to think so. Dombrowski and his Poles, placed around Bobruisk, would be sufficient to keep Ertell in check.
What a contrast it was to the gray, stupid towns where the Terror waited to spring upon the cowed people. In Bobruisk, Minsk, Vilna, and Libau the people were sullen and afraid. They walked in dread, but in the City of Wonder beside the glorious Hudson every person seemed happy and contented.
Lithuania, the Düna, the Dnieper, and lastly Smolensk, were or would soon be covered towards Riga and Dünabourg by Macdonald and 32,000 men; towards Polotsk, by Saint-Cyr, with 30,000; at Witepsk, Smolensk, and Mohilef, by Victor and 40,000; before Bobruisk, by Dombrowski and 12,000; and on the Bug by Schwartzenberg and Regnier, at the head of 45,000 men.
He was permitted to retire into Westphalia without his guard; which he accordingly did. Meanwhile Davoust vainly waited for Bagration at Glusck. That general, not being sufficiently pressed by the Westphalian army, had the option of making a new detour towards the south, to get to Bobruisk, and there cross the Berezina, and reach the Boristhenes near Bickof.
The great divisions of the army detached from the central body were then stationed as follows: To the right, Dombrowski, in front of Bobruisk and opposed to the corps of 12,000 men commanded by the Russian general Hoertel. To the left, the Duke of Reggio, and St. Cyr, at Polotsk and at Bieloé, on the Petersburgh road, which was defended by Wittgenstein and 30,000 men.
Word Of The Day