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"Only provide that Lithuania, Samogitia, Witepsk, Polotsk, Mohilef, Volhynia, the Ukraine, Podolia, be animated by the same spirit which I have witnessed in the Greater Poland; and Providence will crown your good cause with success.
In the hospitals established on the march, in haste, in poor villages, medicaments were either wanting entirely or could be had only in insufficient quantity. All medical plants which grew on the soil in that climate were utilized by the surgeons, as, for instance in the hospital of Witepsk, huckleberries and the root of tormentilla.
The position of Ostrowno was well chosen and commanding; those posted there could see without being seen; it intersected the main road; it had the Düna on the right, a ravine in front, and thick woods on its surface and on the left. It was, moreover, in communication with magazines; it covered them, as well as Witepsk, the capital of these regions, which Ostermann had hurried to defend.
As soon as the emperor had made up his mind, he returned to Witepsk with his guard: there, on the 28th of July, in entering the imperial head-quarters, he laid down his sword, and abruptly depositing it on his maps, with which his tables were covered, he exclaimed; "Here I stop! here I must look round me; rally; refresh my army, and organize Poland.
On his left, Wittgenstein, equally in dread of Oudinot and Macdonald, remained between the two roads from Polotsk and Dünabourg, which meet at Sebez. The Duke of Reggio's orders had been to keep on the defensive. But neither at Polotsk nor at Witepsk was there any thing found in the country, which disclosed the position of the Russians.
His frame, exhausted by the heat, and the struggles of his mind, could only bear a covering of the slightest texture; it was in that state that he passed a portion of his days at Witepsk. But when his body was at rest, his spirit was only the more active. "How many motives urged him towards Moscow!
From this period all his actions indicated to the Russians, still more strongly than at Witepsk, that their mighty foe was resolved to fix himself in the heart of their empire. Moscow, though in ashes, received a governor and municipal officers: orders also were issued to provision it for the winter: and a theatre was formed amid its ruins. The first actors of Paris, it is said, were sent for.
Conduct yourselves as at Austerlitz, at Friedland, at Witepsk, at Smolensk, and let the most remote posterity refer with pride to your conduct on this day; let it be said of you, "He took part in the great battle under the walls of Moscow." The army replied by reiterated acclamations.
He had, no doubt, failed in suffering himself to be surprised at Wilna, and for not considering the marshy course of the Berezina as the proper frontier of Lithuania; but it was remarked that, subsequently, at Witepsk and Smolensk, he had forestalled Napoleon; that on the Loutcheza, on the Dnieper, and at Valoutina, his resistance had been proportionate to time and place; that this petty warfare, and the losses occasioned by it, had been but too much in his favour; every retrograde step of his drawing us to a greater distance from our reinforcements, and carrying him nearer to his: in short, all that he had done, he had done judiciously, whether he had hazarded, defended, or abandoned.
Conduct yourselves as at Austerlitz, at Friedland, at Witepsk, at Smolensk, and let the most remote posterity refer with pride to your conduct on this day; let it be said of you, "He took part in the great battle under the walls of Moscow." The army replied by reiterated acclamations.
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