On the same day a more serious skirmish took place near Vilkomirz. Wittgenstein, falling back from Keidani, heard that Oudinot was marching up the right bank of the Vilia and, fearing that he might be anticipated at Vilkomirz, stationed his rear-guard, under Major-General Kulnev (4 battalions, 4 squadrons, 1 Cossack regiment and 6 guns), on the 27th at Develtova, requesting General Uvarov to support him with a regiment of Dragoons. Meanwhile the 1st Corps defiled through Vilkomirz on the Sventsiani road. As Kulnev, in his turn, was retiring through the place from Develtova, he was attacked by Castex with Oudinot’s advanced guard. The French cavalry charged the Russian Hussars and Cossacks and drove them into the town with considerable loss, but Kulnev succeeded in withdrawing his force across the Vilia, and burnt the bridge, and Castex could only cannonade the Russians until the arrival of infantry. Uvarov’s cavalry regiment, marching rather carelessly to join Kulnev along the river-bank, came under artillery fire and lost several men and horses. When Oudinot’s infantry began to arrive Kulnev followed his chief. He had lost about 300 men, including 240 prisoners. Oudinot reported a loss of 50 killed and wounded. The 2nd Corps occupied Vilkomirz, and bivouacked for the night some 2 miles on the Sventsiani road.
Napoleon himself entered Vilna in the afternoon of the 28th. Alexander had sent his aide-de-camp, General Balashov, with a final message to his opponent, offering to reopen negotiations if the French troops withdrew across the Niemen. Napoleon, with his usual dramatic instinct, received Balashov in the quarters which Alexander had lately quitted. Needless to say, nothing came of the interview. Napoleon regarded the message as an insult, or at best as an attempt to gain time. He merely wrote a long letter to Alexander repeating all his real or imagined grounds for the war. Danilevski says that Balashov was directed to tell Napoleon that if he declined to listen to Alexander’s last overtures he must expect war to the death. It is also said that Napoleon asked questions concerning the roads to Moscow. Balashov replied that there were several, and His Majesty might do as other monarchs had done, and choose. Charles XII, for example, had taken the road that led by way of Poltava!
Napoleon had, in fact, little reason for satisfaction. He had, as he hoped, debouched suddenly into the midst of his opponent’s line of defence; he had collected enormous forces upon his chosen point of attack, and had carefully concealed it until the last moment. His troops had made tremendous exertions to carry out his strategy. And yet hardly anything had in reality been achieved. He was in possession of his enemy’s empty head-quarters, and that was all. His army had suffered severely in the impetuous rush upon Vilna, while that of Russia had quietly withdrawn out of his reach. The carefully planned blow, which was to have been crushing, had been wasted upon the empty air.
On the 29th there was a violent thunderstorm, followed by five days of continuous rain. The results were most disastrous. Movements of troops, though much impeded, were not absolutely checked; but the vast trains on the Vilna-Kovno road were entirely disorganised. The bad roads and tracks became little better than quagmires. The horses broke down completely under the additional strain, especially since the country could supply very little fodder to replace that left behind in abandoned vehicles. The defects of the transport became evident. The waggons were too heavy for the bad Polish roads, and in order to forward any supplies at all they had to be replaced by country carts, which were only capable of carrying much smaller loads. The natural consequences were a shortage of food supplies, and much marauding in quest of them. The Lithuanians, whom the French were supposed to be freeing from the Russian yoke, were maltreated and plundered everywhere by their so-called deliverers. Requisitions, however unsparing, entirely failed to re-establish the wrecked transport. The army was so huge, its encumbrances so enormous, that the poverty-stricken country could not supply the number of draft animals needed. The artillery alone left 120 guns or more and hundreds of waggons at Vilna owing to lack of horses. The number of the latter lost may be conservatively estimated at 10,000; and some 30,000 soldiers were straggling about the country, marauding for food and committing every kind of outrage.
Napoleon himself remained in Vilna for over a fortnight. The 4th and 6th Corps had only just reached the Niemen, and it was absolutely necessary to bring up to the front the magazines from Königsberg. He also wished to organise Lithuania, or rather to exploit it. A provisional government of French partisans was set up at Vilna; garrisons were distributed; and officials placed over the various towns and districts. The first act of the Government was to order levies of horse and foot for Napoleon’s service; one cavalry regiment was to consist entirely of Lithuanian squires, and to be attached to the Imperial Guard. Otherwise the Government could exercise practically no civil functions; its duties were simply such as arose from the military occupation of the country. The peasants were reduced to abject misery by endless requisitions, and by the lawless violence of the stragglers who swarmed everywhere. The French sous-préfet of Novi Troki, a place less than 20 miles from Vilna, was plundered and stripped by marauding soldiers on his way thither, and if such an event could take place within a day’s march of Napoleon’s head-quarters, the state of affairs farther afield may be imagined. Napoleon’s stringent orders against pillage and disorder were little better than useless. The pillage arose simply from lack of food, and the latter was the natural outcome of the fact that the expedition was too large to work in the existing conditions. Napoleon had taken immense pains to organise it, and up to a point he had foreseen and provided for everything. But he had not taken into full account physical difficulties: he had, amongst other blunders, organised a wheeled transport for which roads hardly existed, and he had failed to perceive that the vast magnitude of his enterprise automatically created fresh obstacles to success, or at any rate enormously increased those which already existed.
Though on reaching Vilna Napoleon must have realised that his strategy had already in part miscarried, he at once entered upon the execution of the second part of the plan—the crushing of Bagration’s army which, as he hoped, was already closely pressed by Jerome. As a fact Bagration left Volkovisk that very day for Minsk, while Jerome did not reach Grodno until the 30th. So far as Jerome was concerned, therefore, Bagration was in no danger, and it was only the vacillation at the Russian Imperial head-quarters which later brought him within measurable distance of destruction. There were other forces within Bagration’s sphere of operations which the French Emperor might hope to sweep also into his net. Platov, from Grodno, could hardly hope to reach the First Army with the French in force at Vilna; while the advance-guard of the 4th Corps, after waiting at Orani for orders until the 27th, was also isolated. A more important quarry than either of these, however, was Barclay’s detached left wing under Dokhturov, which had only just started from the neighbourhood of Lida, having of course received its orders last.
Napoleon therefore ordered the following movements: Oudinot, supported by Doumerc’s Cuirassier Division from Grouchy’s Corps, was to follow Wittgenstein from Vilkomirz towards Sventsiani. Murat, with Montbrun’s Cavalry Corps and Friant’s and Gudin’s Infantry Divisions, was directed to pursue Barclay’s central columns. Nansouty, with two of his three divisions and Morand’s Infantry Division, was directed upon Svir, nearly due east of Vilna, with the object of falling on the flank of Dokhturov’s column. Davout with his 4th and 5th Divisions, Pajol’s Cavalry Brigade, the Lancers of the Guard, Grouchy’s two remaining cavalry divisions, Valence’s Cuirassier Division from Nansouty’s Corps, and the Legion of the Vistula, about 45,000 men in all, was to advance upon Minsk and intercept the retreat of Bagration. Davout’s other light cavalry brigade (Bordesoulle) was sent south-westward from Vilna to scout in that direction, and on the 30th encountered Dorokhov’s detachment, which he took for the rear-guard of Baggohufwudt’s Corps. Dorokhov, seeing that French troops were now at Vilna, retreated southward in the hope of joining Platov and, ultimately, Bagration.
Meanwhile Davout and Dokhturov, advancing on converging lines, were rapidly approaching. Dokhturov was marching from Lida in two columns, and on the 30th his left flank-guard, consisting of a brigade of Pahlen’s cavalry, under General Kreutz, reached Ochmiana on the Vilna-Minsk road just as Pajol’s brigade was approaching from Vilna. The danger must, to the Russian generals, have appeared very great, and had they not shown extraordinary energy it would have been so, for although Davout’s infantry was considerably in rear of Pajol it could easily arrive next day and assail the left flank of Dokhturov’s column as it crossed the road. Dokhturov however, as on another and greater emergency, rose to the occasion. He called upon his men for a great effort; and on the 1st of July the 6th Corps and Pahlen’s cavalry crossed the Vilna-Minsk road just ahead of Davout’s advancing columns, and pressed on towards Sventsiani. There was some brisk skirmishing at Ochmiana between Kreutz and Pajol; but at night the bulk of Dokhturov’s force had reached Svir, after a splendid forced march of 28 miles on an execrable road, with a loss of only some scores of men and a few retarded baggage-waggons. During the march of the 2nd the trains were harassed by Nansouty’s advanced guard and a portion of them captured, but that evening Dokhturov was in line with the rest of the First Army about Sventsiani. His prompt decision, admirably seconded by the steadiness and fine marching of his troops, had extricated him safely from a very dangerous position.
Meanwhile Barclay and Wittgenstein had operated their retreat from Vilna and Vilkomirz with little difficulty, and with hardly any fighting. On the 2nd of July the First Army about Sventsiani numbered about 114,000 men; but the Tzar’s advisers had now definitely decided not to fight before reaching the Düna. The magazines which could not be carried away were burned; and on the 3rd the retreat was continued, the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th Corps retiring directly on Drissa, covered by a rear-guard under Korff, while Wittgenstein and Dokhturov fell back on the wings.