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Updated: May 9, 2025
Whenever he ventured to any distance from the river, which he was frequently obliged to do, Platof then surrounded him on all sides.
Claparede and Latour-Maubourg cleared the defile of Spaskaplia, two leagues in the rear of our line, which was already occupied by Platof. Two Russian generals were killed, and others wounded: the loss of the enemy was considerable, but the advantage of the attack, our cannon, our position, the victory in short, were theirs. As for Murat, he no longer had an advanced guard.
On the 10th of December, Ney, who had again voluntarily taken upon himself the command of the rear-guard, left that city, which was immediately after inundated by the Cossacks of Platof, who massacred all the poor wretches whom the Jews threw in their way.
In other respects, a general in the field of battle alone, he was destitute of foresight in the management of any affairs, either public or private, a notorious spendthrift, and, what is rare, not less upright than prodigal. It was this general, with Platof and twenty thousand men, whom we had now to fight.
In fact, all his measures were so well planned, that at the moment when the army of Italy, after an unquiet and disorderly march, came in sight of Dukhowtchina, a town yet uninjured, and was joyfully hastening forward to shelter itself there, several thousand Cossacks sallied forth from it with cannon, and suddenly stopped its progress: at the same time Platof, with all his hordes, came up and attacked its rear-guard and both flanks.
Of the whole division, a single battalion only escaped: it had been left the last in Borizof. It quitted it in the midst of the Russians of Platof and of Tchitchakof, who were effecting in that town, and at that very moment, the junction of the armies of Moscow and of Moldavia.
So long as it was necessary to deceive and temporize, his crafty spirit, his indolence, and his great age, acted of themselves; he was the creature of circumstances, which he ceased to be as soon as it became necessary to march rapidly, to pursue, to anticipate, and to attack. But after passing Smolensk, Platof passed over to the right flank of the road, in order to join Wittgenstein.
He was anxious, like Davoust at the beginning of the retreat, to hide the traces of it from the Cossacks of Kutusoff, who were at his heels. This fruitless attempt, the attacks of Platof by the high road of Orcha, and those of Tchitchakof by the burnt bridge of Borizof, detained him in that place until the close of the day.
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