From the commencement of the arrangements agreed upon between us, in consequence of the armistice, I have seen, with much pain, that your Royal Highness does not fulfil them with that exactness which such stipulations demand.
I have perceived, in the delay of all the deliveries, a secret war which was destroying in detail the spirit of the armistice. In spite of my continual protests, a great part of the provisions has been left in arrear; you have not even supplied what is due at present, and it is in this state of things that I receive, to-day, the 14th, the letter from your Highness, dated the 12th, which informs me that you have orders to suspend the provisions. This suspension has actually taken place these four days past, that is to say, since the 10th; and as our correspondence may reach each other in two hours, I will not conceal from your Highness with what sentiments I must look at the difference between the date and the arrival of your despatch.
The conditions of an armistice, my Lord Duke, are alike binding on both the parties; and as soon as one of them allows himself to annul one of the principal and most essential clauses, the armistice is from that moment broken, and he puts himself in a state of war against the other. It is in this light, that I consider from henceforth the declaration you have made; and although your Highness informs me that the other articles of the truce shall remain, you must perceive that I cannot accept such modifications but by the orders of my sovereign. It only remains to me, then, to beg you to acquaint me whether the six days which are to precede the recommencement of hostilities are to be reckoned from the 12th at one o'clock in the morning, or from the 14th at twelve.
I must declare to you, that I account you responsible for the rupture of an armistice that was concluded between our sovereigns, and that I cannot listen to any evasive explication until after the reception of all the provisions which are due to me.
(Signed,) Count Rapp.
Letter from the Duke of Wurtemberg to General Count Rapp.
From my head-quarters, July 15, 1813.
I have just received the letter which you have addressed to me, and I cannot conceal from your Excellency that I have been more than ordinarily surprised at its contents.
It would be absolutely useless again to repeat to your Excellency what MM. Generals Borozdin and Jelebtzou have not failed to observe to you repeatedly, that is to say, that the momentary delays which the garrison of Dantzic has experienced in being revictualled have only been occasioned by the sudden change of the arrangement that was proposed and demanded by your Excellency, of buying the provisions by your own commissaries, which has necessarily produced the greatest embarrassment; the Prussian commissaries having excused themselves on the state of entire destitution of the provinces contiguous to Dantzic, which have been already charged for so long a time with the provisioning of my troops. If, as I have several times requested, there had been at my head-quarters, conformably to the stipulations of the truce, a French commissary permanently, he would have been able to convince himself of the extreme embarrassment that the Prussian commissaries have felt in procuring waggons, and the necessary provisions for revictualling Dantzic, and for the maintenance of my own troops; so that it is not the army forming the blockade which has thrown obstacles in the way of revictualling the place. Moreover, it is only my sovereign, the august Emperor Alexander, to whom I must render an account of my actions.