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Updated: May 9, 2025
He had so fully calculated on concluding a peace at Moscow, that he had no winter-quarters provided in Lithuania. Kaluga had no temptations for him. Wherefore lay waste fresh provinces? It would be wiser only to threaten them, and thus leave the Russians something to lose, in order to induce them to conclude a peace by which they might be preserved.
In the beginning of May, 1812, the great army of Napoleon arrived at the frontier of Poland, whence it proceeded by forced and most tiresome marches to the river Niemen, which forms the boundary between Lithuania and Poland, arriving at the borders of the river in the middle of June. The forced march continued day and night over the sandy soil of Poland.
They should learn from the victorious Swedes how to conquer the Swedes. With the spring, Charles fell upon the Saxon forces in Livonia, before a fresh league between Augustus and Peter had had time to develop advantageously. After one decisive victory, the Duchy of Courland made submission, and he marched into Lithuania.
It was in the latter end of September, a season extremely cold in those parts, that they began their march but hardships were natural to the king of Sweden's troops; and as they perceived they were going into Lithuania, a place where their valour had been so well proved against the invading Muscovites, their cheeks glowed with a fresher red on the remembrance of their former victories.
In Lithuania they long thought that both had been killed; but both returned, each as full of holes as a sieve. Pan Pociej, an honourable man, immediately after the war had wished to reward generously his defender Dobrzynski; he had offered him for life a farm of five houses, and assigned him yearly a thousand ducats in gold.
They took ship from some northern coast, were tempest-driven to an unfriendly port, visited, apparently, Frederick the Great, spent some time in Lithuania, and there are hints of a love affair, though Charles had already proclaimed that he would never marry to beget royal beggars. He certainly visited Sweden; there was talk of him as a candidate for the Polish crown.
The riders flashed by like spirits; there could only be heard from time to time the dull sound of hoofs, and, what was stranger yet, the clank of sabres; this greatly rejoiced the Steward and yet it terrified him: for, though at that time there was peace in Lithuania, dull rumours of war had long been current, of the French, Dombrowski, and Napoleon.
It was one of the laws of the veselija that no one goes hungry; and, while a rule made in the forests of Lithuania is hard to apply in the stockyards district of Chicago, with its quarter of a million inhabitants, still they did their best, and the children who ran in from the street, and even the dogs, went out again happier.
Full of confidence, then, he set out on the 19th, with 115,000 men, persuaded that he would easily reach friendly Lithuania and his winter quarters "before severe cold set in." The veil was rudely torn from his eyes when, south of Malo-Jaroslavitz, his Marshals found the Russians so strongly posted that any further attack seemed to be an act of folly.
As to lodgings, if there were not houses enough, the cellars might make up the deficiency. Here we might stay till the return of spring, when our reinforcements and all Lithuania in arms should come to relieve, to join us, and to complete the conquest." After listening to this proposal the Emperor was for some time silent and thoughtful; he then replied, "This is a lion's counsel!
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