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Non in alia vilitate, i.e. eadem vilitate, aeque vilia, held in the same low estimation. Humo. Abl. of material. Proximi, sc. ad ripam. Nearest to the Roman border, opposed to interiores. Serratos. Not elsewhere mentioned; probably coins with serrated edges, still found. The word is post-Augustan. Bigatos. Roman coins stamped with a biga or two-horse chariot.
Along the rest of the front, down to the Vilia, the fighting assumed, like everywhere else on the eastern front, the form of trench warfare, interrupted occasionally by artillery duels of considerable severity, doing, however, more damage to the landscape than to the military forces.
Be that as it may, the storm had made the air much cooler and the horses in bivouac suffered from this and also from eating wet grass and lying on muddy ground. So that the army lost several thousand from acute colic. Beyond Kovnow there runs a little river called the Vilia, the bridge over which had been cut by the Russians.
Even at Wilna, all these disorders had taken place; the Duke of Treviso, among others, informed him, "that he had seen, from the Niemen to the Vilia, nothing but ruined habitations, and baggage and provision-waggons abandoned; they were found dispersed on the highways and in the fields, overturned, broke open, and their contents scattered here and there, and pillaged, as if they had been taken by the enemy: he should have imagined himself following a defeated army.
To the testing of the truth of this receipt I have devoted the greater part of the last twenty years, selecting as the corpora vilia of my experiment such persons as could conveniently be removed without occasioning a sensible gap in society. The first step I effected by the removal of one Phoebe Stanley, a girl of gipsy extraction, on March 24, 1792.
One of the escort which accompanied him related to me that the Emperor spurred his horse to the front, and made him run at his utmost speed nearly a league through the woods alone, and notwithstanding the numerous Cossacks scattered through these woods which lie along the right bank of the Vilia. I have more than once seen the Emperor much annoyed because there was no enemy to fight.
The other example which we shall take is of even less intrinsic attraction: in fact it is a very poor thing. There are, however, more ways than one in which corpora vilia are good for experiment and evidence: and we may find useful indications in the mere bookmaking of the time.
In the midst of this butchery, there suddenly appeared a piquet of thirty French, coming from the bridge of the Vilia, where they had been left and forgotten. At sight of this fresh prey, thousands of Russian horsemen came hurrying up, besetting them with loud cries, and assailing them on all sides. But the officer commanding this piquet had already drawn up his soldiers in a circle.
The Duke of Trevisa wrote: "From the Niemen to the Vilia I saw nothing but houses in ruins, wagons and carriages abandoned; we found them scattered on the roads and in the fields; some upset, others open, with their contents strewed here and there, and pillaged, as if they had been taken by the enemy. I thought I was following a routed army.
That very day, a particular calamity was added to this general disaster. At Kowno, Napoleon was exasperated, because the bridge over the Vilia had been thrown down by the cossacks, and opposed the passage of Oudinot. He affected to despise it, like every thing else that opposed him, and ordered a squadron of his Polish guard to swim the river.
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