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If the enemy remain at Smolensk, as I have reason to suppose, it will be a decisive affair, and we cannot have too much numerical strength. Orcha will become the pivot of the army. Every thing leads me to believe that there will be a great battle at Smolensk; hospitals will, therefore, be requisite; they will be necessary at Orcha, Dombrowna, Mohilef, Kochanowo, Bobr, Borizof, and Minsk."
During one of the numerous engagements which took place during these three days, Wathiez's brigade, which was pursuing the enemy, was held up by a wide and swift-flowing stream, a tributary of the Bobr. There was no way of crossing except by two wooden bridges about a quarter of a mile apart, which were covered by Russian artillery fire.
The points of some of the German columns on this day, in fact, came within the range of the artillery of the fortress of Novo-Georgievsk and the army of General von Scholtz reached the line of the Bobr and the Narew between Osowice and Ostrolenka. The action at Przasnysz had been decisive.
In cleaning up the forests to the northwest of Grodno, and in the battles reported during the last few days in the region of the Bobr and the Narew, there have been captured to date one commanding general, two division commanders, four other generals, and in the neighborhood of 40,000 men, seventy-five cannon, a quantity of machine guns, whose number is not yet determined, and much other war material.
These permanent fortifications were supported by strong natural barriers or obstacles in the form of rivers. The Niemen, Bobr, Nareff, Vistula and Bug, with their interminable windings, made more difficult to cross in some places by extensive swamp lands, had, together with the fortified places, offered ideal means for strong defense.
The Russian army of the south had seized the bridge at Borisoff on which Napoleon's safety depended, and Oudinot vainly struggled to wrest it back. The Muscovites burnt it under his eyes. Such was the news which Napoleon heard at Bobr on November 24th.
From here it follows the line of the Bobr to northwest of Ossowetz, which is under our fire, and runs by way of the region to east of Augustowo, by Krasnopol, Mariempol, Pilwiszki, Szaki, along the border through Tauroggen to the northwest. This is from beginning to end entirely on hostile soil."
Unless they were willing to risk the loss of large numbers of troops by having their lines of retreat cut off, it became necessary to withdraw as many as their means of transportation and their efforts to delay the Germans permitted. As a result the fortified town of Ossovetz on the Bobr was evacuated and occupied by the Germans on August 23, 1915.
On leaving Silesia the Emperor told Marshal Ney to follow him, and left Marshal Macdonald in charge of the large force which he left on the Bobr, that is to say the 3rd, 5th and 11th Infantry Corps and the 2nd \cavalry, with a powerful element of artillery, making a total of 75,000 men.
They are more nearly like the little town of Ossowetz on the Bobr River, which held out against the German 42-centimeter guns for over six months, and was then evacuated only because its defenders were flanked out. There was very little concrete in the Gorizia defenses, which were mostly earthworks formed into terraces on which the guns were mounted.
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