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Updated: June 24, 2025
The advanced posts at Lyadi, Vinkowo, and Velij, opposite to those of Barclay and Bagration; for these two hostile armies, the one flying from Napoleon, across the Düna, by Drissa and Witepsk, the other, escaping Davoust across the Berezina and the Boristhenes, by way of Bobruisk, Bickof, and Smolensk, succeeded in forming a junction in the interval bounded by these two rivers.
The Boristhenes flows at two leagues on the right of the high road from Korythinia to Krasnoë. Near Korythinia another road, that from Elnia to Krasnoë, runs close to the great road.
To these motives were added, the effects of a consuming sun reflected from burning sands. Exhausted as he was, the emperor now decided; the course of the Düna and of the Boristhenes marked out the French line.
"While all Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Prussia, and the whole of Germany, were marching under his banners, why should he delay to anticipate the danger, and consolidate the fabric of the great empire, by driving back Alexander and the Russian power, enfeebled as they would be by the loss of all Poland, beyond the Boristhenes?"
Thence, towards the south, the Berezina and its marshes, covered by the Boristhenes, supply no other passage but a few defiles; a very few troops would be sufficient to guard them. Further on, Bobruisk marked out the right of this great line, and orders were given to obtain possession of that fortress.
The first of these is the Dnieper or Boristhenes; on the Russian side of which the dukes Corrensa and Montij march up and down, the latter, who marches on the other side of the plains, being the more powerful of the two . The second river is the Don, or Tanais of the ancients, on the banks of which a certain prince, named Tirbon, sojourns, who is married to the daughter of Baatu.
But Napoleon was long before he could determine to quit the Boristhenes. It appeared to him that this was like a second abandonment of the unfortunate Ney, and casting off for ever his intrepid companion in arms.
It was then particularly that he manifested extreme anxiety about the provisioning of Orcha. It was on the 10th of August, at the very moment when he was dictating this letter, that he gave his order of march. In four days, all his army would be assembled on the left bank of the Boristhenes, and in the direction of Liady.
Two of these to wit, Rha and Boristhenes issuing both out of one fountain, run very far through the land: Rha receiving many other pleasant rivers into it, and running from the very head or spring of it towards the east, after many crooked turnings and windings, dischargeth itself and all the other waters and rivers that fall into it, by divers passages into the Caspian Sea.
Continuing his reconnoissance, he came to one of the gates of the citadel, near the Boristhenes, facing the suburb on the right bank, which was still occupied by the Russians.
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