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Updated: June 28, 2025
The French emperor's opinion was, that this position behind the Niemen was neither offensive nor defensive, and that the Russian army was no better off for the purpose of effecting a retreat; that this army, being so much scattered over a line of sixty leagues, might be surprised and dispersed, as actually happened to it; that, with still more certainty, the left of Barclay, and the entire army of Bagration, being stationed at Lida and at Wolkowisk, in front of the marshes of the Berezina, which they covered, instead of being covered by them, might be thrown back on them and taken; or, at least, that an abrupt and direct attack on Kowno and Wilna would cut them off from their line of operation, indicated by Swentziany and the entrenched camp at Drissa.
However, Colonel A... went to Oudinot and suggested to him that there was a danger that while we were preparing to attack the troops in front of us, General Wittgenstein might send a strong column to our right which could cross the Drissa at another ford which probably existed some three leagues upstream from where we were, and gaining our rear could capture our wounded and our equipment; and that it would be a good idea to send a regiment of cavalry to keep an eye on this ford.
Marshal Oudinot, encouraged by the resounding success which he had just gained, decided to pursue the Russians, and took his army, as on the previous day, back across the Drissa to the right bank; but in order to give General Albert's infantry brigade and the 23rd Chasseurs an opportunity to recover from the effects of the fighting, he left them to keep watch on the field of battle at Sivotschina.
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.
The first army, with which was the Emperor, occupied the fortified camp at Drissa; the second army was retreating, trying to effect a junction with the first one from which it was said to be cut off by large French forces.
As in these movements both the Russian commanders had lost many men, there would be only a hundred and twenty thousand in their united force, a beggarly showing in view of the two years' preparation necessary to bring it together. Consternation reigned in the Russian camp. The Czar could raise no money, Drissa was painfully inadequate as a bulwark, and the people grew desperate.
Oudinot withdrew that same day to the ford at Sivotschina, which he had crossed in the morning in pursuit of Wittgenstein who bearing in mind the disaster which had overwhelmed his advance-guard at this place on the occasion, did not risk sending any isolated unit across to the bank which we occupied. So the two armies, separated by the Drissa, settled themselves for the night.
At the end of the day we made our bivouac on the banks of the Drissa.
Everyone was dissatisfied with the general course of affairs in the Russian army, but no one anticipated any danger of invasion of the Russian provinces, and no one thought the war would extend farther than the western, the Polish, provinces. Prince Andrew found Barclay de Tolly, to whom he had been assigned, on the bank of the Drissa.
Neither Bennigsen nor the Emperor was there, but Chernyshev, the Emperor's aide-de-camp, received Bolkonski and informed him that the Emperor, accompanied by General Bennigsen and Marquis Paulucci, had gone a second time that day to inspect the fortifications of the Drissa camp, of the suitability of which serious doubts were beginning to be felt.
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