United States or Turkmenistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The communication of the centre and left was maintained by the corps of Oudinot, and that of the centre and the extreme right by the corps of Regnier, who had with him the Saxon auxiliaries and the Polish legion of Dombrowski.
At Wilna, they appeared to have had no suspicion of the real state of affairs; and at a time when the garrisons, the depôts, the marching battalions, and the divisions of Durutte, Loison, and Dombrowski, between the Berezina and the Vistula, might have formed at Minsk an army of thirty thousand men, three thousand men, headed by a general of no reputation, were the only forces which Tchitchakof found there to oppose him.
On the twenty-third, Montmartre's bloody shambles show how merciless are the stormers. Dombrowski lies dead beside his useless guns. All hope is lost. Murder and pillage reign in Paris. Behind their doors, barricaded with the heavier furniture, the family of Aristide Dauvray invoke the mercy of God. They are led by Pere Francois, who thinks the awful Day of Judgment may be near.
Dombrowski, then, has ordered the inhabitants of Neuilly to leave in 24 hours, having the intention to reduce the village to ashes. The day ended by the arrest of general Cluseret. MAY 1rst. This day is signalized by the capture of the railway-station of Clamart, where the insurgents lost, in addition to 60 prisoners, about 300 killed by the bayonet.
The Emperor must now have much regretted that he had given the command of Lithuania to the Dutchman Hogendorf, his aide-de-camp who, having never been in action did not know what to do to save Minsk, where he could have easily have combined the 30,000 men of the Durette, Loison and Dombrowski divisions which had been placed at his disposal.
During the last five days of the Commune, Dombrowski, its only general with military capacity, was killed, it is supposed, by one of his own men. The Tuileries, the Hôtel-de-Ville, and numerous other buildings were fired, the Dominican Brothers were massacred, and the executions in the Rue Haxo took place, besides others in other parts of Belleville and at the Prefecture.
The error which led him into that false direction had other and stronger foundations. Kutusoff's instructions directed his responsibility to that point. Ertell, who commanded twelve thousand men near Bobruisk, refused to quit his cantonments, to follow Dombrowski, and to come and defend that part of the river.
Dombrowski? from the Italian land?” until finally all at once, as if thought had fused with thought and word with word, all cried with one voice, as if a signal had been given: “Dombrowski!” All shouted together, all embraced one another; the peasant and the Tatar count, the prince’s hat and the cross, the white rose, the griffin, and the ship; they forgot everything, even the Bernardine; they only sang and shouted: “Brandy, mead, wine!”
We hear it was the blowing up of a powder factory in the Rue de Wagram, Paris, or at the Trocadéro. The Committee of Public Safety, in order to save the country from a military dictatorship, has associated Civil Commissioners with the various Generals of the Commune. With Dombrowski are joined Burger and Dereuve, with La Cecilia, Johannard, and with Wrobleski, Leo Meillet.
With these words he turned his plate bottom upwards, as a sign that he would not eat, and relapsed into glum silence. “Pan Dobrzynski,” said General Dombrowski to him, “are you that famous swordsman of the Kosciuszko times, that Maciej, called Switch! Your fame has reached me. And pray tell me, is it possible that you are still so hale, so vigorous! How many years have gone by!
Word Of The Day