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Russian counterattacks, reported from day to day through June, with difficulty had held in check this army, which evidently was aiming at the Warsaw-Petrograd Railway on the sector between Vilna and Dvinsk. On the right flank of these forces operated the troops of General von Eichhorn, with the line of the Niemen for their objective.
Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz were taken by storm during the spring of 1812; and at the close of June, three days before Napoleon crossed the Niemen, in his march on Moscow, Wellington crossed the Agueda in a march on Salamanca.
The Poles were immediately directed onward to Warsaw through Olita, and the dismounted cavalry by Merecz to the Niemen; while the rest of the army was to follow the high road, which they had again regained. Up to that time Napoleon seemed to have entertained no idea of quitting his army.
Fouche was very anxious about this decision however. "Look out for yourself, my dear Emperor," he wrote. "Wear a cork suit, or insist that the raft shall be plentifully supplied with life-preservers. Those Eastern emperors would like nothing better than to have you founder in the Niemen." "We are not afraid," Napoleon replied. "If the craft sinks We shall swim ashore on Alexander's back."
It need not be on any one of them: in fact, it was better that it should be some distance away; for it thus fulfilled better the all-important function of a "flanking position." Such a position Phull had discovered at Drissa in a curve of the River Dwina. It was sufficiently far from the roads leading from the Niemen to St. Petersburg and to Moscow efficiently to protect them both.
And who shall say that the early Jacobinism and later culture of Napoleon was more than a veneer spread all too thinly over an Italian condottiere of the Renaissance age? These men were too expert at wiles really to trust to the pompous assurances of Tilsit and Erfurt. De Maistre tells us that Napoleon never partook of Alexander's repasts on the banks of the Niemen.
The attention of mankind was never more entirely fixed on one spot than it was, during these fourteen days, upon Dantzick. On the 22nd, Buonaparte broke silence in a bulletin. "Soldiers," said he, "Russia is dragged on by her fate: her destiny must be accomplished. Let us march! let us cross the Niemen: let us carry war into her territories.
In the lands through which the troops were to march before they reached the Niemen, the spring had done its work; there was abundance of forage. Napoleon had impatiently awaited this time during ten months of secret activity. It was the hope of Russia and the fear of those Frenchmen who understood the Russian climate that the campaign would drag into the winter.
This was his sole habitation, whilst the Emperors occupied the two portions of the town, which is divided by the Niemen. The fact I am about to relate reached me indirectly through the medium of an offices of the Imperial Guard, who was on duty in Napoleon's apartments and was an eye-witness of it.
War had begun between Napoleon and Russia; and on June 24 the Emperor, crossing the Niemen, invaded the dominion of the Czar. Great Britain, already nine years at war with France, had just succeeded in detaching Russia from her enemy, and ranging her on her own side.
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