Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 18, 2025
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.
Tchitchakof had found himself in one of those difficult situations, in which prepossession, being compelled to fluctuate in uncertainty between several points at once, has no sooner determined and fixed upon one side, than it removes and gets overturned upon another.
His correspondence also of the 20th of November with Victor proved his security; it supposed that Oudinôt would have nearly arrived on the 25th at Borizof, while that place had been taken possession of by Tchitchakof on the 21st.
"If that had been done, we should not have lost our best men at Wiazma, at the Wop, at the Dnieper, and along the whole road; in short, even now, Kutusoff, Wittgenstein, and perhaps Tchitchakof would not have had time to prepare more fatal days for us. "But why, in the absence of orders from Napoleon, had not that precaution been taken by the commanders, all of them kings, princes, and marshals?
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.
He probably thought it too rash to turn the Berezina at its sources, in order to join Tchitchakof; for a vague rumour had already reached us of the march of this army from the south upon Minsk and Borizof, and of the defection of Schwartzenberg.
Thus he neglected the hostile armies of Essen at Riga, of Wittgenstein before Polotsk, of Ertell before Bobruisk, and of Tchitchakof in Volhynia.
Far from thinking of making his escape through the midst of these three hostile armies, his only idea now was, that of beating Tchitchakof, and retaking Minsk. It is true, that eight hours afterwards, in a second letter to the Duke of Reggio, he resigned himself to cross the Berezina near Veselowo, and to retreat directly upon Wilna by Vileika, avoiding the Russian admiral.
Had he at first stopped there, as he declared he should on his arrival at Witepsk; had he there taken proper measures for preserving and recruiting his army; had Tormasof, Tchitchakof and Hoertel been driven out of Volhynia; had he raised a hundred thousand Cossacks in those rich provinces; his winter-quarters would then have been habitable.
But Wittgenstein having made his attack before Tchitchakof, the nearer and more pressing danger had attracted every one's attention; the wise instructions of the 6th of October had not been repeated by Napoleon, and they appeared to have been entirely forgotten by his lieutenant.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking