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Davout, however, followed him with his usual tenacity, and caught up with him on the road to Mohilew, where, although he had no more than 12,000 men, he attacked the 36,000 Russians and defeated them; though admittedly the Russians were surprised on an area of very broken ground which prevented them from making the best use of their superior numbers.
From the Niemen to Mohilew, Ostrowno, Polotsk, Krasnoi, the first time, Smolensk, Walutina, Borodino, Conflagration of Moscow, and on the retreat the battles of Winkonow, Jaroslawetz, Wiasma, Vop, Krasnoi, the second time, Beresina, Wilna, Kowno; this is not a great distance, says Paul Holzhausen in his book "Die Deutschen in Russland 1812" but a great piece of history.
But, may we not ask why it is that many of these so-called truths, professedly founded upon personal acquaintance with Polish localities, men, and institutions, spring from sources in many respects similar to that of the recent publication in La Presse, from individuals who never were in Poland beyond a few hours spent in Warsaw who have seen nothing of the country, except as passing in a passenger car from Kracow to Mohilew, a distance of about seven hundred miles, traversed in about twenty-four hours who never understood one word of Polish, of Rossian, or of any of the cognate tongues who have never conversed freely with the inhabitants who may have been entertained during a few hours by Government employés or by cautious and distrustful patriots who were in a hurry to see St.
A synthesis was needed to merge the two currents, the humanist and the romantic, and lead the languishing Haskalah back to the living sources of national Judaism. This was the task accomplished by Perez Smolenskin, the leader of the national progressive movement. Perez Smolenskin was born, in 1842, at Monastryshchina, a little market town near Mohilew.
The criticism of Jewish customs and manners was brilliantly done by M. Cahen and Ben-Zebi, to mention only two among the many journalists of talent. The "Letters from Mohilew" by the former testify to the impartiality and independence, not only of the author, but also of the editor who accepted them for his periodical.
Barclay de Tolly was of the same opinion. At first he had resolved to give battle, in order to keep the roads open for Prince Bagration, with whom he had made an appointment to meet at Babinowiczi; but the news of the check received by the Russian army at Mohilew convinced him that their junction must now be delayed, and that his colleague felt himself compelled to look forward to a long movement before succeeding in passing the Dnieper.
It is certainly true that the battles of late have not represented a file of twenty thousand men, but to call them on that account frontier demonstrations, is to add subtle calumny to ungenerous irony; it is a deviation even from the very 'tardy truths. It is an assertion not made in an impartial spirit, but calculated in favor of, and determinately stated with the intention of sustaining those who are exerting themselves to prove that Minsk, Grodno, Mohilew, Wolhynia, Podole, Plock, Augustow, Lithuania, Samogitia, Liefland, etc., were ancient dependencies of Russia, before she had herself an existence either in name or fact!
The necessity for a speedy victory was being already felt. The Russian army had been cut in two by the rapid march of the French, Prince Bagration being isolated on the Dnieper, where Marshal Davout was already hemming him in, and soon after gained an important victory, at Mohilew, 23rd July, 1812.
The two villages near Lida, two in the government of Grodno, the hundreds of villages and thousands of huts near Dwina, Rzezyca, Mohilew, Witebsk, burned, razed to the ground by an excited and hired rabble of Muscovite Muziks, who had sought and found hospitality in Poland for hundreds of years certainly all these villages and huts were not inhabited even by the 'lesser nobility. And it is also certain that the dwellers were not so cruelly punished for denouncing the 'dogs of nobles' an expression, if we are not mistaken, taken from the vocabulary of the corporal or subaltern officials, and which has never reached the fourteenth class from which the Rossian begins to reckon humanity.
The forces of King Jerome and Prince Poniatowski remained in the rear. Desertion and fatigue were already decimating the soldiers. The King of Westphalia, placed under Marshal Davout's orders, had with difficulty accepted that secondary position. Difficulties having arisen, the prince returned towards Germany, and thus lessened the marshal's success at Mohilew.
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