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He should also have sent an aide-de-camp to Studianka to reconnoitre the road and return to the division: but Partouneaux neglected all these precautions and simply marched off at the prescribed time. He came to a fork in the road, and he did not know which way to go.
Fresh misfortunes awaited him, for the Russian General Koutousoff, who had been following Partouneaux from Borisoff with a strong body of troops, once he heard of his defeat, speeded up his march and came to join Wittgenstein in his attack on Marshal Victor. The Marshal, whose army corps had been reduced to 10,000 men, put up a stout resistance.
With daybreak the Russian generals again challenged General Partouneaux, who was standing upright in the snow with the 400 or 500 of his brigade, remonstrating with him, and he, with desperation in his soul, surrendered. The other two brigades of his division that had been separated from him also laid down their arms.
On the evening of the 27th, the Partouneaux division was attacked on both sides, and defended its positions heroically, but without being able to break through. On the morning of the 28th, after being twice summoned by the Russians, the general, in despair, gave himself up a prisoner.
In this situation, a flag of truce came, in the name of Wittgenstein and fifty thousand men, to order the French to surrender. Partouneaux rejected the summons.
He had left, to form his rear-guard, the infantry division of General Partouneaux, who had been told not to leave the town until two hours after him, and who should, in consequence, have sent out a small detachment of men, who could follow the main body and leave guides to signpost the route.
Numbers of them continued to cross the river after him as long as daylight lasted. The army of Victor, at the same time, succeeded the guard in its position on the heights of Studzianka. Hitherto all had gone on well. But Victor, in passing through Borizof, had left there Partouneaux with his division.
When the bullets came from all sides, the confusion soon reached the climax; the three little brigades of Partouneaux forming for defense found themselves entangled with several thousand stragglers and fugitives who clamorously threw themselves into their ranks; the women of the mass, with baggage, especially with their frightful, piercing cries, characterized this scene of desolation.
General Partouneaux decided to extricate himself, to open a way or to perish. He was with a thousand men against 40 thousand. Several challenges to surrender he refused, and kept on fighting. The enemy, likewise exhausted, suspended firing toward midnight, being certain to take the last of this handful of braves who resisted so heroically in the morning.
The better to deceive the enemy they had been left in their error, and now they were destined to be sacrificed, together with the division of Partouneaux, on account of the terrible necessity to deceive Tchitchakoff.
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