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Updated: June 2, 2025
The men of my regiment were noted everywhere for their good health, which I attribute firstly to the quantity of bread and meat which I was able to give them and secondly to the liquor which I was able to obtain by an arrangement with the Jesuits of Polotsk.
The Marshal, who had gone to Wilna after he had been wounded at Polotsk on the 18th of August, having heard that Saint-Cyr had been wounded in his turn on the 18th of October, and had left the army, decided to rejoin 2nd Corps and take up its command.
At last, when Steingell was within half an hour's march of Polotsk, when he had only to make a few efforts to appear in the plain, to reach the bridge of the town, and shut out Saint Cyr from the only outlet by which he could escape from Wittgenstein, he halted.
While the Emperor, now in control of Wilna, tried in vain to manoeuvre the Russian army into a decisive battle, Oudinot's corps, having crossed the Dvina at Polotsk, established itself in front of this town, facing the numerous troops of General Wittgenstein who formed the enemy right wing.
This was the most difficult passage in our retreat, and both these hostile armies were already close to it, at the time that Napoleon was at the distance of twelve days' journey, with the winter, famine, and the grand Russian army between them. At Smolensk it was only suspected that Minsk was in danger; the officers who were present at the loss of Polotsk gave the following details respecting it:
Our road to Moscow was thus intercepted; and Count Wittgenstein, with 25,000 or 30,000 men, was to cover St. Petersburg between Polotsk and Riga. Marshal Macdonald, at the head of the left wing of the French army, threatened the coasts of the Baltic.
He passed the Niemen on the 24th of June, took Vilna, and Vitepsk, defeated the Russians at Astrowno, Polotsk, Mohilev, Smolensk, at the Moskva, and on the 14th of September, made his entry into Moscow. The Russian cabinet relied for its defence not only upon its troops, but on its vast territory and on its climate.
It was in vain that Saint Cyr then weakened his force by three regiments, which he dispatched to the other side to meet Steingell, and whose march he contrived to conceal from Wittgenstein's observation. Every moment the noise of the former's artillery was approaching nearer and nearer to Polotsk.
"Only provide that Lithuania, Samogitia, Witepsk, Polotsk, Mohilef, Volhynia, the Ukraine, Podolia, be animated by the same spirit which I have witnessed in the Greater Poland; and Providence will crown your good cause with success.
Lithuania, the Düna, the Dnieper, and lastly Smolensk, were or would soon be covered towards Riga and Dünabourg by Macdonald and 32,000 men; towards Polotsk, by Saint-Cyr, with 30,000; at Witepsk, Smolensk, and Mohilef, by Victor and 40,000; before Bobruisk, by Dombrowski and 12,000; and on the Bug by Schwartzenberg and Regnier, at the head of 45,000 men.
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