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The intrepidity and reputation of the defeated general, his report, the boldness of the attack, the hope, nay the urgent necessity, of a decisive engagement, all led the emperor to believe, that their numbers alone had carried the day, that the Russian army was between the Düna and the Dnieper, and that it was marching against the centre of his cantonments: this was actually the fact.
With an immense fleet of barges, containing sixty thousand men, he descended the Dnieper to the Euxine. Coasting along the western shore his fleet entered the mouth of the Danube. The Bulgarians fought like heroes to repel the invaders. All their efforts were in vain.
In this internal conflict, however, it was remarked, what an ascendence his enterprising genius had over his prudence, and how the former so disposed matters as to give birth to circumstances which must necessarily hurry him away. Meanwhile the Russians still defended the suburb on the right bank of the Dnieper.
The Dnieper, which the ancients called Borysthenes, passes by Kiow, and the old tradition of the country affirms, that it was a boatman, who in crossing it found its waters so pure that he was led to found a town on its banks. In fact, the rivers are the most beautiful natural objects in Russia. It would be difficult to find any small streams, their course would be so much obstructed by the sand.
The drive of a few weeks, with many loiterings for pleasure in the cities on the way, took them to Kief on the Dnieper. This ancient city, the residence of the grand dukes of Russia, contained a population of about twenty-six thousand.
In fact, as their advance from the basins of the Volkhoff and Dnieper to the foot of the Altai and Sayan mountains, that is, along nearly a quarter of the earth's circumference, the Russian colonizers could always find the same physical conditions, the same forest and prairies as they had left at home, the same facilities for agriculture, only modified somewhat by minor topographical features.
A determined attack under a rain of shot having been unsuccessful, the marshal saw the uselessness of the attempt, and without for an instant losing his presence of mind or his courage, he resolved to effect a movement during the night towards the Dnieper, cross the river, and escape by the right bank, in order to regain the main army.
It was ever the same boundless, waving, beautiful steppe. Only at intervals the summits of distant forests shone blue, on one hand, stretching along the banks of the Dnieper. Once only did Taras point out to his sons a small black speck far away amongst the grass, saying, "Look, children! yonder gallops a Tatar."
Nicholas B. breathed the air of the "Border," his native air. Unkind fate was lying in wait for him amongst the scenes of his youth. At the first news of the rising in Warsaw all the remount establishment, officers, vets., and the very troopers, were put promptly under arrest and hurried off in a body beyond the Dnieper to the nearest town in Russia proper.
This discipline, which formed their glory in their retreat, was their disgrace in ours. They were for a long time uncertain, not knowing which enemy they were fighting with; for they had imagined that Ney had retreated from Smolensk by the right bank of the Dnieper; they were mistaken, as is frequently the case, from supposing that their enemy had done what he ought to have done.
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