Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 1, 2025
This suited Kutusoff's purpose; for it in effect left him in full possession of the means to avoid a general action until he chose to hazard one, and yet offered no interruption to the measures by which he and his nation were deliberately and systematically straitening the supplies of the invader.
But it was not decisive, since the Russian army, far from being annihilated, drew off with its files, companies, and regiments so far intact as to be easily available for the quick incorporation of new recruits. This it was which gave verisimilitude to Kutusoff's boast and made the French occupation of Moscow a matter of doubtful expediency. Yet the temptation was irresistible.
State of Napoleon's Mind Destruction Imminent The Affair at Wiazma Kutusoff's Timidity Napoleon's Despair Arrival at Smolensk The Army Reorganized Napoleon's Daring at Krasnoi Ney's Great Feat Sufferings of the Army The Russian Plan Tchitchagoff's Capture of Borrissoff. For nine days the retreat went steadily on. Mortier came in on October twenty-seventh; Davout was assigned to keep the rear.
Kutusoff's conduct both at Malojaroslavetz and at Wiazma has been explained by his fixed resolution to leave the destruction of the invaders to his gaunt allies, want and winter.
Under this disguise, they mingled with their conquerors; and such was the disorganization, the stupid carelessness; and the numbness into which their army had fallen, that these prisoners marched for a whole month in the midst of them without being recognised. The hundred and twenty thousand men of Kutusoff's army were then reduced to thirty-five thousand.
Of Kutusoff's two hundred thousand men only forty thousand remained when he entered Vilna after the Napoleonic forces had left it; Wittgenstein's army had suffered proportionately, and the troops from the Danube still more.
He then mentioned the capture of Minsk, and after admitting the skilfulness of Kutusoff's persevering manoeuvres on his right flank, declared "that he meant to abandon his line of operations on the Minsk, unite with the Dukes of Belluno and Reggio, cut his way through Wittgenstein's army, and regain Wilna by turning the sources of the Berezina." Jomini combated this plan.
Ney's corps was then assigned to the place of danger in the rear a place he kept with desperate gallantry until he earned the title "bravest of the brave." The early promise of substantially reinforcing Kutusoff's army had not been fulfilled.
The error which led him into that false direction had other and stronger foundations. Kutusoff's instructions directed his responsibility to that point. Ertell, who commanded twelve thousand men near Bobruisk, refused to quit his cantonments, to follow Dombrowski, and to come and defend that part of the river.
During the darkness, the Viceroy executed a long and hazardous detour, and joined the Emperor in Krasnoi, on the 17th. On this night-march they fell in with the videttes of another of Kutusoff's columns, and owed their preservation to the quickness of a Polish soldier, who answered the challenge in Russian.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking