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But D'Arragon knew that Macdonald was likely to be in no better plight than Murat; for it was an open secret in Dantzig that Yorck, with four-fifths of Macdonald's army, was about to abandon him. The road to Kowno was not to be mistaken. On either side of it, like fallen landmarks, the dead lay huddled on the snow.
Presently there appeared a German force of destroyers and two cruisers, the Ariadne and the Strassburg; they were driven off mainly by the gallant fighting of the Arethusa; but thinking there was no further support the Germans then sent out three heavier cruisers, the Mainz, the Koln, and apparently the Yorck.
On the 30th, Macdonald's anxiety was redoubled; it was fully exhibited in one of his letters of that day's date, in which, however, he did not yet venture to appear suspicious of a defection. He wrote "that he could not understand the reason of this delay; that he had sent a number of officers and emissaries with orders to Yorck to rejoin him, but that he had received no answer.
Famine and misery accompany him on his march to Nogent, and there, on the 7th, he hears tidings that strike despair to every heart but his. An Anglo-German force is besieging the staunch old Carnot in Antwerp; Bülow has entered Brussels; Belgium is lost: Macdonald's weak corps is falling back on Epernay, hard pressed by Yorck, while Blücher is heading for Paris.
It was Yorck, who, instead of rejoining him, deprived him of Massenbach, whom he had just recalled. His own defection, which had commenced on the 26th of December, was just consummated. On the 30th of December, a convention between Yorck and the Russian general Dibitch was concluded at Taurogen.
Blücher's army was stationed amidst hilly country deeply furrowed by the valleys of the Katzbach and the "raging Neisse." Less than half of the allied army of 95,000 men was composed of Prussians: the Russians naturally obeyed his orders with some reluctance, and even his own countryman, Yorck, grudgingly followed the behests of the "hussar general."
Their administration was directed by an intendant and agents taken from their own army. They lived in abundance. It was on that very point, however, that the quarrel between Macdonald and Yorck began, and that the hatred of the latter found an opening to diffuse itself. First of all, some complaints were made in the country against their administration.
While Souham's force was still toiling up, Sacken's artillery began to ply it with shot, and had Yorck charged quickly with his corps of Prussians, the day might have been won forthwith. But that opinionated general insisted on leisurely deploying his men.
Never was a surprise more successful; Marmont was quite off his guard; horse and foot fled in wild confusion, leaving 2,500 prisoners and forty-five cannon in the hands of the victorious Yorck. Could the allies have pressed home their advantage, the result must have been decisive; but Blücher had fallen ill, and a halt was called.
Between Dantzig and Konigsberg they had indeed found a few travellers going eastward despatch-bearers seeking Murat spies going northwards to Tilsit, and General Yorck still in treaty with his own conscience a prominent member of the Tugendbund, wondering, like many others, if there were any virtue left in the world.
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