United States or Kenya ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
III., 34: "A complete balance sheet of the public treasury for the first six months of 1812 was under Napoleon's eyes at Witebsk, the 11th of August, eleven days after the close of these first six months.
At any rate we find Menshikoff, when he was spending the Easter of 1706 at Witebsk, writing to his sister to send her to him. But a greater than Menshikoff was soon to appear on the scene none other than the Emperor Peter himself. One day the Tsar, calling on his favourite, was astonished to see the cleanliness of his surroundings and his person.
The two villages near Lida, two in the government of Grodno, the hundreds of villages and thousands of huts near Dwina, Rzezyca, Mohilew, Witebsk, burned, razed to the ground by an excited and hired rabble of Muscovite Muziks, who had sought and found hospitality in Poland for hundreds of years certainly all these villages and huts were not inhabited even by the 'lesser nobility. And it is also certain that the dwellers were not so cruelly punished for denouncing the 'dogs of nobles' an expression, if we are not mistaken, taken from the vocabulary of the corporal or subaltern officials, and which has never reached the fourteenth class from which the Rossian begins to reckon humanity.
The reflections which this sight excited were profoundly painful. How many victims, and what result! The army had marched from Wilna to Witebsk, from Witebsk to Smolensk, hoping for a decisive battle, seeking this battle at Wiasma, then at Ghjat, and had found it at last at Borodino, a bloody, terrible battle.
It seemed to them almost that they were pursuing a phantom army, a will-o'-the-wisp, that eluded all their efforts to grasp it, and a fierce fight between the rear-guard of Barclay de Tolly's army and the advance-guard of Murat's cavalry, in which the latter suffered severely, was the only fight of importance, until the invaders, after marching more than half-way to Moscow, arrived at Witebsk.
Mortier's division remained last in Moscow, and marched on the 23rd of October, after having, by Napoleon's orders, blown up the Kremlin, the Church of St. Nicholas, and the adjoining buildings. The safest line of retreat would have been through Witebsk, but Napoleon took the more southern road, and the army believed that it was intended to fight another great battle with the Russians.
Ney set the town on fire to cover his retreat, crossed the bridges, and there stemmed the further advance of the Russians. The French loss in the engagement was 6000 killed and wounded, and 2000 prisoners. The Viceroy was directed to march on Witebsk, but he was overtaken by the enemy when endeavouring to throw a bridge over the half-frozen little river called the Vop.
Word Of The Day