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Updated: May 29, 2025
There were a great many places on the way, with strange names, but it was very plain when we got to Vitebsk. The railroad station was a big place, much bigger than the one in Polotzk. Several trains came in at once, instead of only one. There was an immense buffet, with fruits and confections, and a place where books were sold. My cousin never let go my hand, on account of the crowd.
But how could there be an end to Polotzk now? Polotzk was everything on both sides of the Dvina, as all my life I had known; and the Dvina, it now turned out, never broke off at all. It was very curious that the Dvina should remain the same, while Polotzk changed into Vitebsk! The mystery of this transmutation led to much fruitful thinking.
If Alexander could be brought to terms, he would yield more quickly with one of his capitals in the enemy's grasp. In the attempt to form a calm judgment concerning this conclusion it must be remembered that the French base was secure; there were garrisons of about fourteen thousand men each in Vitebsk, Orscha, and Mohileff; another was left at Smolensk.
"When the snow melts they'll sink in the Polish swamps. Only they could fail to see it," the prince continued, evidently thinking of the campaign of 1807 which seemed to him so recent. "Bennigsen should have advanced into Prussia sooner, then things would have taken a different turn..." "But, Prince," Dessalles began timidly, "the letter mentions Vitebsk...." "Ah, the letter?
I would be aware that the bass voice with the flourishes in front of me belonged to the stuttering widower from Vitebsk, that the squeaky, jerky intonation to the right came from the red-headed fellow whom I loathed for his thick lips, or that the sweet, unassertive cadences that came floating from the east wall were being uttered by Reb Rachmiel, the "man of acumen" whose father-in-law had made a fortune as a war-contractor in the late conflict with Turkey.
A weekly story paper of a worse than worthless character, that circulated widely in our neighborhood because subscribers were rewarded with a premium of a diamond ring, warranted I don't know how many karats, occupied me for hours. The stories in this paper resembled, in breathlessness of plot, abundance of horrors, and improbability of characters, the things I used to read in Vitebsk.
Vitebsk and Smolensk occupy analogous positions on the rivers Dwina and Dnieper, the former of which is to the westward and flows north; the latter, farther inland, flows in the opposite direction into the very heart of Russia. Barclay had planned to await Bagration at Vitebsk, and Napoleon, arriving on July twenty-seventh, hoped for a decisive battle there.
But my mother remained on her bed. Weeks, months, a year she lay there, and half of another year. All the doctors in Polotzk attended her in turn, and one doctor came all the way from Vitebsk. Every country practitioner for miles around was consulted, every quack, every old wife who knew a charm.
There, they assured him, the mere fact of his presence was enough to animate the national enthusiasm of the old Russians, and stir up the whole country against the invader. General Barclay, henceforward free in his movements, began on the 10th July to march up the Dwina as far as Vitebsk, hoping to be joined by Bagration opposite Smolensk.
This Napoleon perfectly understood. He could either summon back the patience he had vaunted first at Dresden, then at Vitebsk, or he could yield to his impulse for swift action and go on to Moscow in the hope, before entering the capital, of fighting the "good battle" for which he so longed. The older officers with long memories compared the Russian Smolensk with the Syrian Acre.
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