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If our army is well organized and strong and has withdrawn to Drissa without suffering any defeats, we owe this entirely to Barclay. If Barclay is now to be superseded by Bennigsen all will be lost, for Bennigsen showed his incapacity already in 1807."
Verdier, forced to engage in order to support them, was already compromising the rest of his division, when the Duke of Reggio hurried up, relieved his troops from this peril, led them back behind the Drissa, and on the following day resumed his first position under the walls of Polotsk. There he found Saint-Cyr and the Bavarians, who increased the force of his corps to 35,000 men.
On their trip up the Drissa they had seen no sign of the enemy nor had they found any trace of the supposed ford. After several days rest Wittgenstein led part of his troops towards the lower Dvina, from where Macdonald was threatening his right.
They insisted on the retention of the camp at Drissa, according to Pfuel's plan, but on changing the movements of the other armies. Though, by this course, neither one aim nor the other could be attained, yet it seemed best to the adherents of this third party.
It need not be on any one of them: in fact, it was better that it should be some distance away; for it thus fulfilled better the all-important function of a "flanking position." Such a position Phull had discovered at Drissa in a curve of the River Dwina. It was sufficiently far from the roads leading from the Niemen to St. Petersburg and to Moscow efficiently to protect them both.
The day was ending when the French troops, having crossed the marsh, repassed Kliastitsoui and found themselves once more on the banks of the Drissa, at the ford of Sivotschina which they had crossed in the morning to follow the Russians who had been defeated at Kliastitsoui.
Disappointed, as I have said, by the abandonment of the camp of Drissa by the Russian army, he marched rapidly towards Witepsk, where the greater part of the French forces were then collected: but here the ire of the Emperor was again aroused by a new retreat of the Russians; for the encounters of Ostrovno and Mohilev, although important, could not be considered as the kind of battle the Emperor so ardently desired.
On his right, the king of Westphalia was to drive Bagration on Davoust, who would cut off his communication with Alexander, make him surrender, and get possession of the course of the Boristhenes; on his left, Murat, Oudinot, and Ney, already before Drissa, were directed to keep Barclay and his emperor in their front; he himself with the élite of his army, the army of Italy, the Bavarian army, and three divisions detached from Davoust, was to march upon Witepsk between Davoust and Murat, ready to join one or the other of them; in this manner penetrating and interposing between the two hostile armies, forcing himself between them and beyond them; finally, keeping them separate, not only by that central position, but by the uncertainty which it would create in Alexander as to which of his two capitals it would be requisite for him to defend.
It is surrounded by an earthwork fortification, having at one time undergone a siege during the war waged by Charles XII against Peter the Great. The corps commanded by Ney, Murat and Montbrun, in order to get from Drissa to Witepsk, had built a pontoon bridge across the Dvina, opposite Polotsk, which they left for Oudinot's corps, which was going to take the road for St.Petersburg.
Night was falling when the outposts which had been left to watch the Drissa, reported that the enemy were crossing the river.
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