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Updated: June 4, 2025
Their center was beaten, while their left was piled up in the ravine of the Adige, and Lusignan with their right was making a wide détour to get upon the rear of the French army, where he was speedily surrounded and captured. Saint-Cyr's escape was indeed little less than a miracle.
They did not break out in open revolt, but Marshal Macdonald's orders were obeyed with reluctance, and the Prussians encamped near Riga could at any moment join Wittgenstein's Russians to crush 2nd Corps camped round Polotsk. Plainly, Marshal Saint-Cyr's position was becoming difficult.
Here it is, just as he gave it, and while it is fresh in my memory. It seems that all through the month of April and well into May, Saint-Cyr's ill luck stuck to him. He lost daily, and at last only a very slender remnant of his wife's money was left to play with. Week by week, too, he grew more wasted and feeble, fading with his fading fortune.
There was rejoicing in the French camp, but on the morning of the 19th we heard that General Steinghel with 14,000 Russians had just crossed the Dvina above Disna and was moving up the left bank to get behind Polotsk, seize the bridges and trap Saint-Cyr's force between his own and Wittgenstein's.
It was necessary to charge it with the bayonet, amidst a thick fire of grape-shot; every thing succeeded, but when it was supposed that there was no more to do but to pursue, all was nearly lost; some Russian dragoons, according to some, and horse-guards, according to others, risked a charge on a battery of Saint-Cyr's; a French brigade placed to support it advanced, then suddenly turned its back and fled through the midst of our cannon, which it prevented from being fired.
For a time Saint-Cyr's Bavarian corps lost from eight to nine hundred men a day, and it was by no means a solitary exception. Such facts account for the dilatoriness of Napoleon's movements in part; for the rest, his imperial plans demanded that he should organize all the territories in his rear, and he gave himself the utmost pains to do so.
General Saint-Cyr's first act was to order the withdrawal of those infantrymen who were in action, in the certainty that the tired enemy would do the same, as soon as they were no longer under attack. The result was that soon the firing ceased on both sides. The troops were able to re-form and to have some rest, and further fighting was postponed until the next day.
Davout's corps numbered seventy-two thousand, all French; Oudinot's thirty-seven thousand, French and Swiss; Ney's thirty-nine thousand, French and Würtembergers; Prince Eugène's forty-five thousand, French and Italians; Poniatowski's thirty-six thousand, all Poles; Gouvion Saint-Cyr's twenty-five thousand, all Bavarians; Regnier's seventeen thousand, all Saxons; Vandamme's eighteen thousand, Hessians and Westphalians; Macdonald's thirty-two thousand, Prussians and Poles.
Such was the man whom the Emperor had just placed under Oudinet's orders, to the great regret of the latter, who feared that he would be shown up by comparison with Saint-Cyr's superior talents.
Having determined to detach himself from Oudinot, he first caused him to be reinforced by Saint-Cyr's corps, and ordered him to connect himself with the Duke of Tarentum; having resolved also to march against the enemy, he did it by changing in front of him, and within his reach, but without his knowledge, the line of his operations at Witepsk for that of Minsk.
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