United States or Lebanon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
A Westphalian officer, von Lossberg, commander of a battalion, wrote in his letters to his wife which are of great value to the history of the campaign from Toloschin on July 25: "On our march we met a detachment of Davout's corps; they shot before our eyes a commissary of the army who had been condemned to death for fraud.
We thought at first that this must be Davout's corps, which we knew was in the neighbourhood, but as no one answered our challenge, we had no doubt that these were enemy troops.
But instead of that, at the next village the sentinels of Davout's infantry corps detained him as the pickets of the vanguard had done, and an adjutant of the corps commander, who was fetched, conducted him into the village to Marshal Davout.
For this purpose he crossed the Isar, and, turning to the right, marched directly on Ratisbon to attack Davout's command with his superior force before Masséna's scattered divisions could reach the positions assigned to them. But he was too late.
"You hear, soldiers?" cried General Laborde; "the general orders the ordinary step. Slow time, soldiers. March!" It was in the same way that Davout's troops defiled, constantly turning round to fire at the squadrons of the enemy's cavalry, closely pursuing them. When the exhausted corps were again brought together at Liady, the faces of all were still more gloomy than on the previous evening.
Some of Junot's wagons also had been captured or abandoned. Three wagons had been raided and robbed by stragglers from Davout's corps.
Davout was to concentrate between Marienwerder, Marienburg, and Elbing; the Prussians had been appointed to the advance-guard, and still remained on their right, advancing to the banks of the Niemen. Marshal Oudinot occupied the suburbs of Dantzig, forming Davout's right; while Ney's body, at Thorn, supported his left.
To him came the dismal news that Wittgenstein had resumed the offensive against Saint-Cyr, and that the line of attack on the French left was as open from the north as was that on the other side from the south. Davout's rear-guard was steadily disintegrating under hardships and before the harassing attacks of the Russian riders under Platoff. Partizan warfare was assuming alarming dimensions.
Marshal Davout's and Marshal Lannes' corps crossed the river at Warsaw, Marshal Augereau and his men crossed at Utrate, from where we went on to the banks of the Ukra, a tributary of the Bug and the Vistula. The entire French army having crossed this last river, found itself face to face with the Russians, against whom the Emperor ordered an attack on the 24th December.
Davout's troops, in whose charge were the prisoners, were crossing the Crimean bridge and some were already debouching into the Kaluga road. But the baggage trains stretched out so that the last of Beauharnais' train had not yet got out of Moscow and reached the Kaluga road when the vanguard of Ney's army was already emerging from the Great Ordynka Street.
Word Of The Day