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Updated: June 17, 2025
It was possible that the latter would then become aware of his superiority: and the Emperor, who at Orcha, on the 20th of November, saw his rear-guard, lost, his left flank menaced by Kutusoff, and his advance column stopped at the Berezina by the army of Volhynia, learned that Wittgenstein and forty thousand more enemies, far from being beaten and repulsed, were ready to fall upon his right, and that he had no time to lose.
Wittgenstein, elated by this easy success, pushed it beyond all bounds. In the first transport of what he regarded as a victory, he ordered Koulnief, and 12,000 men, to pass the Drissa, in order to pursue d'Albert and Legrand. The latter had made a halt; Albert hastened to inform the marshal.
He himself, turning to the left with Legrand's infantry, Castex's cavalry, and Aubrey's light artillery, advanced as far as Yakoubowo, on the road to Osweïa. As chance would have it, Wittgenstein, at the same moment, was marching from Osweïa to Yakoubowo; the hostile armies unexpectedly met each other in front of that village.
Wittgenstein's determination to carry this point lasted as long as it was daylight. The redoubts, which were defended by Maison, were taken and retaken seven times. Seven times did Wittgenstein believe himself the conqueror; Saint Cyr finally wore him out. Legrand and Maison remained in possession of their entrenchments, which were bathed with the blood of the Russians.
When she was seventeen, her father bought her a husband, the son of the Field Marshal Fürst Wittgenstein, and on May 7, 1836, she gave her hand to the Prince Nicolaus von Sayn-Wittgenstein, seven years her senior. He was at the time a cavalry captain in the Russian army, a handsome, but intellectually unimpressive man.
In Volhynia, Schwarzenberg had zealously endeavored to spare his troops, and had, by his retreat toward the grandduchy of Warsaw, left Tschitschakow at liberty to turn his arms against Napoleon, against whom Wittgenstein also advanced in the design of blocking up his route, while Kutusow incessantly assailed his flank and rear. On the 6th of November, the frost suddenly set in.
"I was told by General Wittgenstein, on returning from the headquarters of the Emperor of Russia, that York had been informed by the newspapers of the severe punishment which your majesty intended to inflict upon him, and that you disavowed him and the course he had taken. Accordingly, he requested General Kleist to take command of the troops.
On the sixth Napoleon was informed that Victor, having effected a junction with Saint-Cyr, had checked Wittgenstein in a series of gallant struggles, but that step by step the two divisions had been driven back until now they were only thirty miles distant, having abandoned the line of the Dwina, including the depot of Vitebsk.
During the last two days, the cold and misery had been such that the old guard had lost two-thirds, and the young guard one-half of their effective men. This fact, and the calamity which had fallen upon Partouneaux's division, sufficiently explain the frightful diminution of Victor's corps, and yet that marshal kept Wittgenstein in check during the whole of that day, the 28th.
It is a method which has often produced good results for the Russians; so General Wittgenstein had prepared this welcome for us. The situation seemed to me to be so serious that to keep my regiment out of sight, I ordered them to go back into the forest while I myself hurried to warn Marshal Oudinot of the danger which lay ahead.
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