United States or Yemen ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Thirty thousand Austrians advanced towards Minsk under the orders of Prince Schwartzenberg. The emperor sent orders to Paris to despatch all his guard still left in the depots. He rejected the idea of an establishment on the Dnieper and Dwina being a sufficient result of the campaign.
Napoleon guessed this movement of the Russian general, and determined to push forward, prevent the junction of the two armies of the enemy, attack them by suddenly crossing the Dwina, and thus render impossible the continuous retreat of the Russians, who were now drawing him in their pursuit into the interior of the empire, without giving him an opportunity of striking the blow which was to be their destruction.
The fickle goddess also favoured the rescue of the chief Russian army from imminent peril at Drissa. In pursuance of Phull's scheme, the Czar and Barclay de Tolly fell back with that army towards the intrenched camp on the Dwina. But doubts had already begun to haunt their minds as to the wisdom of Phull's plans. In fact, the bias of Barclay's nature was towards the proven and the practical.
Victor, learning of Napoleon's straits, had left fifteen thousand men in Smolensk, and was advancing to join Saint-Cyr on the Dwina in order to assure the safety of the main army from that side.
If the Polish partition of 1773 brought the Russian frontier westward to the upper waters of the Dwina and the Dnieper, it gave Galicia to Maria Theresa, and West Prussia to Frederick himself.
"I've made a temporary repair, Lieutenant," he called into the speaking tube, "and the leakage has stopped. How much gas have we left?" "Enough for about an hour of flying, including the emergency tank." "Thunder! No chance to get back to the Denver. Better head inland and follow the course of the Dwina.
The Czar, with General Barclay de Tolly, had fixed himself in the intrenched camp at Drissa before the Dwina; and it was upon this principal division that Napoleon directed his march when he left Wilna, on the evening of the 16th July. Murat commanded the advanced guard, followed first by Ney, and then by Oudinot; Prince Eugene, who advanced towards the right, was to join Marshal Davout.
This nation has marked its boundaries with graveyards toward the Dniester, Dnieper, Niemen, and Dwina, where rest the beaten hordes of Batu or Nogays.
Now they were sending an expedition up the railroad, and another on steamers up the North Dwina river, pursuing Russian Socialists and driving them back into frozen swamps! And here were American troops, being hurried ashore, and outfitted and made ready to join in what seemed to Jimmie to be warfare upon organized working-men! Jimmie was almost beside himself with bewilderment.
The marshal laid siege to Riga, but his forces were insufficient to guard this vast territory, and he in vain asked for reinforcements. Everywhere the men succumbed under the extent of the task imposed upon them. Marshal Oudinot, who formerly supported Macdonald at Polotsk, had crossed the Dwina, and was advancing, by the emperor's orders, against Count Wittgenstein.
Word Of The Day