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Updated: May 19, 2025
It was in seventy-three that I was sent on a special mission to Prince Pierre Troubetskoi's splendid chateau at Jitomir in Volhynia. The crafty Russians were watching us even there, and were busied in assembling troops secretly, at Kiev and Wilna. To another was given the proud place of secret spy over the higher circles of Wilna, while my duty was to watch Jitomir and Kiev.
Godfrey found the long railway journey across the flat plains of Germany very dull, as he was unable to exchange a word with his fellow-passengers; but as soon as he crossed the Russian frontier he felt at home again, and enjoyed the run through the thickly-wooded country lying between Wilna and St. Petersburg. As he stepped out at the station everything seemed to come back vividly to his memory.
The first firing was heard at the Wilna gate; Ney ran thither, with a view to drive away Platof's artillery with his own; but he found his cannon had been already spiked, and that his artillerymen had fled!
This choice was unlucky in some points; it displeased the jealous pride of an aristocracy at all times difficult to satisfy. The four Lithuanian provinces of Wilna, Minsk, Grodno, and Bialystok, had each a government commission and national sub-prefects.
The reserves were at Wilna and Swentziany. In conclusion, a vast entrenched camp was erected before Drissa, within an elbow of the Düna.
Instead of doing as we had done during the campaigns of Austerlitz, Jena and Friedland, and leaving behind the advancing army small bodies of troops which, stretching back in echelon, could keep in regular touch with one another to ensure tranquillity in our rear, to expedite the forwarding of munitions and individual soldiers and the departure of convoys of wounded, we unwisely pushed all our available forces towards Moscow, so that between that city and the Nieman, if one excepts Wilna and Smolensk, there was not one garrison, nor storage depot, nor hospital.
Unfortunately, he approached a fire to warm himself and felt a severe pain in the stump; extensive inflammation, with swelling, set in; gangraene followed and, notwithstanding most skillful attendance, he died soon after his arrival at Wilna. So far von Scherer.
The army, whom its chief had thus abandoned, pursued meanwhile that miserable march, of which every day augmented the disorder. The garrison of Wilna and Maison's corps, united to those who escaped across the Beresina, might number in all 80,000. Before Murat reached Wilna, 40,000 of these had either died or fallen alive into the hands of their unrelenting pursuers.
Its provisions had ascended the Pregel in large barges up to Vehlau, and in lighter craft as far as Insterburg. The other convoys went by land-carriage from Königsberg to Labiau, and from thence, by means of the Niemen and the Vilia, to Kowno and Wilna.
The universities of Warsaw and Wilna were broken up, and their rich libraries removed to St. Petersburg. Even the lower schools were mostly deprived of their funds, and changed to Russian government schools.
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