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The stoutest and most resolute natures render even their seclusion glorious and exemplary: "Tuta et parvula laudo, Quum res deficiunt, satis inter vilia fortis Verum, ubi quid melius contingit et unctius, idem Hos sapere et solos aio bene vivere, quorum Conspicitur nitidis fundata pecunia villis." A great deal less would serve my turn well enough.
After that date fighting along the eastern front assumed the form of trench warfare, except in the extreme northern section, and in Volhynia, eastern Galicia. In the sector, bounded in the north by the Vilia, and in the south by the Niemen, the Russian front was along a line running through the towns of Smorgon, Krevo, Vishneff, Sabresina, Mikolaieff.
From then on the trade of the city grew in bounds and leaps, and it became a center of the trading to and from Prussia. Its industries, too, were developed extensively. Seven fortifications are situated to the south of the city, three more protect the road to Vilna, and one the bridge across the Vilia.
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.
But you must not linger by the road, for they are being sent back to Moscow to rebuild that which they have caused to be destroyed." He laughed and waved his gloved hand as D'Arragon drove on. After the broken land and low abrupt hills of Kowno, the country was flat again until the valley of the Vilia opened out.
When on the point of penetrating into the Russian territory, his Majesty no longer maintained his customary serenity; at least, I had occasion to remark that he was unusually silent at the hours I had the honor to approach him; and, nevertheless, as soon as his plans were made, and he had brought his troops from the other side of the Vilia, the river on which Wilna is situated, the Emperor took possession of the Russian territory with the enthusiastic ardor one would expect in a young man.
Farther south the Germans advanced toward Rakishki on the Kupishki-Dvinsk railroad and between that road and the River Vilia they even reached at some points the Vilna-Dvinsk railroad. Without any lull the battle raged now all along the line from the Dvina to Vilna, and from Vilna to the Niemen.
There Kovno is situated where the Vilia joins the Niemen, and only a short distance down the latter the Nieviaza adds its waters, so that Kovno forms a natural center of a number of extensive valleys which join here.
There, the emperor calculated on the magazines of the inhabitants, on those of the enemy and on his own, which he had ordered to be brought from Dantzic, by the Frischhaff, the Pregel, the Deine, the canal Frederic, and the Vilia. We were upon the verge of the Russian frontier; from right to left, or from south to north, the army was disposed in the following manner, in front of the Niemen.
Several persons have pretended that there was too much circumspection or too much negligence in the first operations of the invasion; that from the Vistula, the assailing army had received orders to march with all the precaution of one attacked; that the aggression once commenced, and Alexander having fled, the advanced guard of Napoleon ought to have re-ascended the two banks of the Vilia with more celerity and more in advance, and that the army of Italy should have followed this movement more closely.
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