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Updated: May 9, 2025
Krasnoe was thus surrounded by a semicircle of our troops, disputing the enemy's positions step by step; but Admiral Tormazoff was now on our rear, in order to hold the Orscha road. The emperor saw that he should be speedily hemmed in, and resolved to resume his march, without waiting for Ney's regiments.
This expedition was at first intended for the Austrians, but the will of the Emperor Francis, as well as that of Napoleon, called them to head-quarters; and Reynier's forces were to replace them in the posts which they held. Nevertheless, the Russian General Tormazoff threatened the grand duchy, after taking possession of Kobrin, which was badly defended by the Saxons.
Tormazoff's columns seemed to wait for the final orders to cut the passage of what were left of the great army. Kutuzoff resisted the urgent advice of Tormazoff as well as the arguments and excitement of General Wilson, who had been sent to him by the English Government.
Considerably to the left lay "the second army," as it was called, of 80,000, under Bagrathion; with whom were Platoff and 12,000 of his Cossacks; while, at the extreme of that wing, "the army of Volhynia," 20,000 strong, commanded by Tormazoff, watched Schwartzenberg.
Bagrathion informed Barclay that he was now marching, not on Vitepsk, but on Smolensko, and the commander-in-chief felt the necessity of abandoning Vitepsk also. Meantime Regnier, on the right wing, and Oudinot, on the left, were defeated; the former by Tormazoff, the latter by Witgenstein, both with severe loss.
The united army of Tormazoff and Tchichagoff, on the south, and that of Witgenstein, on the north, had obtained decided advantages over the French generals respectively opposed to them, and now threatened to close in between Napoleon's central columns and the magazines in Poland. Witzingerode was at the head of a formidable force on the road to St.
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