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The French army was then lying encamped along the river Passarge with the Russians before them, the Austrians on their right flank, and the conquered Prussians in their rear. A long line of communications had to be maintained with France, through a hostile country; but so carefully, and with such foresight was this provided for, that it is said Napoleon never missed a post.
In the winter of 1807, Napoleon established his army in cantonments behind the Passarge in face of the enemy, the advanced guard alone being hutted near the cities of Gutstadt, Osterode, &c. The army numbered more than one hundred and twenty thousand men, and much skill was requisite in feeding it and keeping it otherwise comfortable in this position until June.
But, falling in with Bernadotte near the River Passarge, his progress was checked and his design revealed. At once Napoleon prepared to march northwards and throw the Russians into the sea, a plan which in its turn was foiled by the seizure of a French despatch by Cossacks.
When Napoleon withdrew behind the Passarge, not all the fictions which his fertile brain could devise and his busy agents spread were sufficient to deceive the astute operators of the Paris exchange.
Ibsen, the dramatist, wrote to his German translator, Ludwig Passarge, "In every new poem or play I have aimed at my own spiritual emancipation and purification for a man shares the responsibility and the guilt of the society to which he belongs."
The attempts at mediation by Austria had failed; the campaign of 1809 was being prepared; everywhere the grass was springing up in the fields, affording necessary sustenance for the horses; the wild swans were reappearing in flocks upon the shores of the Passarge. The Emperor Napoleon had fixed upon the 10th of June for the resumption of hostilities.
Even winter quarters, when compact and in face of the enemy and not protected by an armistice, are strategic positions, for instance, Napoleon on the Passarge in 1807. The daily positions taken up by an army beyond the reach of the enemy, which are sometimes spread out either to deceive him or to facilitate movements, are of this class.
This work was composed with more than Ibsen's customary care, and was published at the beginning of December, in an edition of ten thousand copies. Before the end of 1881 Ibsen was aware of the terrific turmoil which Ghosts had begun to occasion. He wrote to Passarge: "My new play has now appeared, and has occasioned a terrible uproar in the Scandinavian press.
Danzig surrendered to the French on May the 24th, and Neisse in Silesia a little later; and it was not till the besiegers of these fortresses came up to swell the French host that Bennigsen opened the campaign. He was soon to rue the delay. His efforts to drive the foe from the River Passarge were promptly foiled, and he retired in haste to his intrenched camp at Heilsberg.
He established his headquarters at the little town of Osterode, directing from this advanced post the works of defence on the Vistula and Passarge, at the same time as the preparations for the siege of Dantzig.
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