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Updated: June 5, 2025
He halted within a day's march of the Lukolmlia, near Sienno, where Wittgenstein did not much disturb him; but the Duke of Reggio having at last received the order dated from Dombrowna, which directed him to recover Minsk, Victor was about to be left alone before the Russian general.
At any rate, without a defection, which it was too late to foresee, and which a precipitate return could alone prevent, he flattered himself that Schwartzenberg, Regnier, Durutte, Dombrowski, and twenty thousand men, divided between Minsk, Slonim, Grodno, and Wilna in short, that seventy thousand men; would not allow sixty thousand Russians to gain possession of his magazines and to cut off his retreat.
Prince Schwartzenberg was doubtful, he said, about leaving Warsaw unprotected; and Admiral Tchitchakoff advanced unchecked, and was already threatening Minsk, where the great bulk of our supplies was collected together.
At Wilna, they appeared to have had no suspicion of the real state of affairs; and at a time when the garrisons, the depôts, the marching battalions, and the divisions of Durutte, Loison, and Dombrowski, between the Berezina and the Vistula, might have formed at Minsk an army of thirty thousand men, three thousand men, headed by a general of no reputation, were the only forces which Tchitchakof found there to oppose him.
Napoleon, at first, was mute and overpowered at this last blow; but immediately afterwards, elevating himself in proportion to his danger, he coolly replied, "Very well! we have now nothing to do, but to clear ourselves a passage with our bayonets." He wrote to the Duke of Reggio, to march rapidly to the same point, and to hasten to recover Minsk; the Duke of Belluno would cover his march.
To deceive the foe, the Emperor told off a regiment or two southwards with a long tail of camp-followers that were taken to be an army. And this wily move, harmonizing with recent demonstrations of the Austrians on the side of Minsk, convinced the Muscovite leader that Napoleon was minded to clasp hands with them.
Individual philanthropists did their utmost to counterbalance the restrictions on education. Trade schools were opened by the Committee for the Promotion of a Knowledge of Trade and Agriculture among the Jews of Russia, in Minsk, Vilna, and Vitebsk, besides fifteen manual training schools for boys and twenty for girls, in which the indigent pupils are provided with food, clothes, and books.
Under the superintendence of Luria, the Minsk Talmud Torah became a model institution; the training conferred there on the poor and orphaned surpassed that given to the children of the rich in their private schools. This aroused jealousy in the parents of the latter, and at their request Luria organized a merchants' school, for the wealthier class.
He then stated that he knew of a road to the right of that town, constructed on wooden bridges, and passing across the marshes of Lithuania. This was the only road, by his account, by which the army could reach Wilna by Zembin and Malodeczno, leaving Minsk on the left, its road a day's journey longer, its fifty broken bridges rendering a passage impracticable, and Tchitchakof in possession of it.
We could from there watch the main road from Minsk, down which Admiral Tchitchakoff had led his troops to the lower Beresina, and up which he would have to come to reach us, once he heard that we had crossed the river at Studianka. On the evening of the 27th, the Emperor crossed the bridge with his guard and went to settle at a hamlet named Zawniski, where the cavalry were ordered to join him.
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