This answer effectually damped the ardour of the Poles; and thenceforth, with a few exceptions, the eminent and influential men of the nation were mere observers of the war. If any doubt as to Napoleon's treachery could have remained after his answer to the Diet, it must have been wholly removed when the plan of his campaign transpired, and the Austrian auxiliaries were known to be stationed on the right of his whole line. On them, as it seemed, the march through Volhynia was thus devolved, and no clearer proof could have been afforded that it was Napoleon's desire to repress every symptom of a national insurrection in Lithuania. The inhabitants, had French soldiers come amongst them, might have been expected to rise in enthusiasm; the white uniform of Austria was known to be hateful in their eyes, in the same degree, and for precisely the same reason, as the Russian green.
The disposition of the French army when the campaign commenced was as follows:—The left wing, commanded by Macdonald, and amounting to 30,000 men, had orders to march through Courland, with the view of, if possible, outflanking the Russian right, and gaining possession of the sea coast, in the direction of Riga. The right wing, composed almost wholly of the Austrians, 30,000 in number, and commanded by Schwartzenberg, were stationed, as has been already mentioned, on the Volhynian frontier. Between these moved the various corps forming the grand central army, under the general superintendence of Napoleon himself, viz. those of Davoust, Ney, the King of Westphalia, the Viceroy of Italy, Poniatowski, Junot and Victor; and in numbers not falling below 250,000. The communication of the centre and left was maintained by the corps of Oudinot, and that of the centre and the extreme right by the corps of Regnier, who had with him the Saxon auxiliaries and the Polish legion of Dombrowski. The chief command of the whole cavalry of the host was assigned to Murat, King of Naples; but he was in person at the headquarters of the Emperor, having immediately under his order three divisions of horse, those of Grouchy, Montbrun, and Nansouty. Augereau with his division was to remain in the north of Germany, to overawe Berlin and protect the communications with France.
A glance at the map will show that Napoleon's base of operations extended over full one hundred leagues; and that the heads of his various columns were so distributed, that the Russians could not guess whether St. Petersburg or Moscow formed the main object of his march.
The Russian main army, under Barclay de Tolly himself, had its headquarters at Wilna; and consisted, at the opening of the campaign, of 120,000. Considerably to the left lay "the second army," as it was called, of 80,000, under Bagrathion; with whom were Platoff and 12,000 of his Cossacks; while, at the extreme of that wing, "the army of Volhynia," 20,000 strong, commanded by Tormazoff, watched Schwartzenberg. On the right of Barclay de Tolly was Witgenstein with 30,000, and between these again and the sea, the corps of Essen, not more than 10,000 strong. Behind the whole line two armies of reserve were rapidly forming at Novgorod and Smolensko; each, probably, of about 20,000 men. The Russians actually on the field at the opening of the campaign were, then, as nearly as can be computed, in number 260,000; while Napoleon was prepared to cross the Niemen at the head of at least 470,000 men.
On the Russian side the plan of the campaign had been settled ere now; it was entirely defensive. Taught by the events of the former war in Poland, and of that which had already fixed the reputation of Wellington in the Peninsula, the Czar was resolved, from the beginning, to draw Buonaparte if possible into the heart of his own country ere he gave him battle. The various divisions of the Russian force had orders to fall back leisurely as the enemy advanced, destroying whatever they could not remove along with them, and halting only at certain points, where intrenched camps had already been formed for their reception. The difficulty of feeding half a million of men in a country deliberately wasted beforehand, and separated by so great a space from Germany, to say nothing of France, was sure to increase with every hour and every step; and Alexander's great object was to husband his own strength until the Polar winter should set in around the strangers, and bring the miseries which he thus foresaw to a crisis. Napoleon, on the other hand, had calculated on being met by the Russians at, or even in advance of, their frontier (as he had been by the Austrians in the campaigns of Austerlitz and Wagram, and by the Prussians in that of Jena); of gaining a great battle; marching immediately either to St. Petersburg or to Moscow—and dictating a peace, after the fashion of Presburg or Schoenbrunn, within the walls of one of the Czar's own palaces.
On the 24th of June, the grand imperial army, consolidated into three masses, began their passage of the Niemen; the King of Westphalia at Grodno; the Viceroy Eugene at Pilony, and Napoleon himself near Kowno. The emperor rode on in front of his army to reconnoitre the banks; his horse stumbled, and he fell to the ground. "A bad omen—a Roman would return," exclaimed some one; it is not certain whether Buonaparte himself or one of his attendants. The first party that crossed were challenged by a single Cossack. "For what purpose," said he, "do you enter the Russian country?" "To beat you and take Wilna," answered the advanced guard. The sentinel struck spurs to his horse, and disappeared in the forest. There came on at the same moment a tremendous thunder-storm. Thus began the fatal invasion.
No opposition awaited these enormous hosts as they traversed the plains of Lithuania. Alexander withdrew his armies deliberately as they advanced. The capital itself, Wilna, was evacuated two days before they came in sight of it; and Napoleon took up his quarters there on the 28th of June. But it was found that all the magazines, which Buonaparte had counted on seizing, had been burnt before the Russians withdrew, and the imperial bulletins began already to denounce the "barbarous method" in which the enemy seemed resolved to conduct his defence.
It was noticed in an early part of this narrative that Napoleon's plan of warfare could hardly have been carried into execution on a great scale, unless by permitting the troops to subsist on plunder; and we have seen through how many campaigns the marauding system was adopted without producing any serious inconvenience to the French. Buonaparte, however, had learned from Spain and Portugal how difficult it is for soldiers to find food in these ways, provided the population around them be really united in hostility against them. He had further considered the vast distance at which a war with Russia must needs be carried on, and the natural poverty of most of the Czar's provinces, and came to the resolution of departing on this occasion from his old system. In a word, months before he left Paris, he had given orders for preparing immense quantities of provisions of all kinds, to be conveyed along with his gigantic host, and render him independent of the countries which might form the theatre of his operations. The destruction of the magazines at Wilna was sufficient indication that the Emperor had judged well in ordering his commissariat to be placed on an efficient footing; and his attention was naturally directed to ascertaining, ere he advanced further, in how much his directions as to this matter had been fulfilled. He remained twenty days at Wilna—a pause altogether extraordinary in a Buonapartean campaign, and which can only be accounted for by his anxiety on this head. The result of his inquiries was most unsatisfactory. The prodigious extent of the contracts into which his war-minister had entered was adequate to the occasion; but the movement of such enormous trains of cattle and waggons as these contracts provided for must, under any circumstances, have been tedious, and in some degree uncertain. In this case they were entered into either by French traders, who, in consequence of Buonaparte's own practice in preceding campaigns, could have slender experience of the method of supplying a great army in the field; by Germans, who regarded the French Emperor as the enemy of the world, and served him accordingly with reluctance; or finally, by Polish Jews—a race of inveterate smugglers, and consequently of inveterate swindlers.
The result was, that after spending three weeks at Wilna, the Emperor found himself under the necessity, either of laying aside his invasion for another year, or of urging it in the face of every difficulty which he had foreseen, and, moreover, of that presented by a commissariat less effective by two-thirds than he had calculated on.