CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA
pangs of hunger in order that Lithuanian enthusiasm might not cool.
Meanwhile the war had not progressed altogether as he desired. His aim had been to conceal his advance across the Niemen, to surprise the two chief Russian armies while far separated, and thus to end the war on Lithuanian soil by a blow such as he had dealt at Friedland. The Russian arrangements seemed to favour his plan. Their two chief arrays, that led by the Czar and by General Barclay de Tolly, some 125,000 strong north of Vilna, and that of Prince Bagration mustering now about 45,000 effectives, in the province of Volhynia, were labouring to carry out the strategy devised by Phull. The former was directly to oppose the march of Napoleon's main army, while the smaller Russian force was to operate on its flanks and rear. Such a plan could only have succeeded in the good old times when war was conducted according to ceremonious etiquette; it courted destruction from Napoleon. At Vilna the Emperor directed the movements that were to ensnare Bagration. Already he had urged on the march of Davoust, who was to circle round from the north, and the advance of Jerome Bonaparte's Westphalians, who were bidden to hurry on eastwards from the town of Grodno on the Upper Niemen. Their convergence would drive Bagration into the almost trackless marshes of the Pripet, whence his force would emerge, if at all, as helpless units.
Such was Napoleon's plan, and it would have succeeded but for a miscalculation in the time needed for Jerome's march. Napoleon underrated the difficulties of his advance or else overrated his brother's military capacity. The King of Westphalia was delayed a few days at Grodno by bad weather and other difficulties; thus Bagration, who had been ordered by the Czar to retire, was able to escape the meshes closing around him by a speedy retreat to Bobruisk, whence he moved northwards. Napoleon was enraged at this loss of a priceless opportunity, and addressed vehement reproaches to Jerome for his slowness and "small-mindedness." The youngest[pg.249] of the Bonapartes resented this rebuke which ignored the difficulties besetting a rapid advance. The prospect of being subjected to that prince of martinets, Davoust, chafed his pride; and, throwing up his command, he forthwith returned to the pleasures of Cassel.
By great good fortune, Bagration's force had escaped from the snares strewn in its path by the strategy of Phull and the counter-moves of Napoleon. The fickle goddess also favoured the rescue of the chief Russian army from imminent peril at Drissa. In pursuance of Phull's scheme, the Czar and Barclay de Tolly fell back with that army towards the intrenched camp on the Dwina. But doubts had already begun to haunt their minds as to the wisdom of Phull's plans. In fact, the bias of Barclay's nature was towards the proven and the practical. He came of a Scottish family which long ago had settled in Livonia, and had won prosperity and esteem in the trade of Riga. His ancestry and his early surroundings therefore disposed him to the careful weighing of evidence and distrust of vague theories. His thoroughness in military organization during the war in Finland and his unquestioned probity and open-mindedness, had recently brought him high into favour with the Czar, who made him War Minister. He had no wide acquaintance with the science of warfare, and has been judged altogether deficient in a wide outlook on events and in those masterly conceptions which mark the great warrior.[[263]] But nations are sometimes ruined by lofty genius, while at times they may be saved by humdrum prudence; and Barclay's common sense had no small share in saving Russia.
Two months before the Grand Army passed the Niemen, he had expressed the hope that God would send retreat to the Russian armies; and we may safely attribute to his influence with the Czar the timely order to Bagration to desist from flanking tactics and beat a retreat while yet there was time. That portion of Phull's strategy having[pg.250] signally failed, Alexander naturally became more suspicious about the Drissa plan; and during the retirement from Vilna, he ordered a survey of the works to be made by Phull's adjutant, a young German named Clausewitz, who was destined to win a name as an authority in strategy. This officer was unable conscientiously to present a cheering report. He found the camp deficient in many respects. Nevertheless, Alexander still clung to the hope of checking the French advance before these great intrenchments.
On his arrival there, on July 8th, this hope also was dashed. Michaud, a young Sardinian engineer, pointed out several serious defects in their construction. Barclay also protested against shutting up a large part of the defending army in a camp which could easily be blockaded by Napoleon's vast forces. Finally, as the Russian reserves stationed there proved to be disappointingly weak both in numbers and efficiency, the Czar determined to evacuate the camp, intrust the sole command to Barclay, and retire to his northern capital. It is said that, before he left the army, the Grand Duke Constantine, a friend of the French cause, made a last effort to induce him to come to terms with Napoleon, now that the plan of campaign had failed. If so, Alexander repelled the attempt. Pride as a ruler and a just resentment against Napoleon prevented any compromise; and probably he now saw that safety for himself and ruin for his foe lay in the firm adoption of that Fabian policy of retreat and delay, which Scharnhorst had advocated and Barclay was now determined to carry out.
Though still hampered by the intrigues of Constantine, Bennigsen, and other generals, who hated him as a foreigner and feigned to despise him as a coward, Barclay at once took the step which he had long felt to be necessary; he ordered a retreat which would bring him into touch with Bagration. Accordingly, leaving Wittgenstein with 25,000 men to hold Oudinot's corps in check on the middle Dwina, he marched eastwards towards Vitepsk. True, he left St. Petersburg open to[pg.251] attack; but it was not likely that Napoleon, when the summer was far spent, would press so far north and forego his usual plan of striking at the enemy's chief forces. He would certainly seek to hinder the junction of the two Russian armies, as soon as he saw that this was Barclay's aim. Such proved to be the case. Napoleon soon penetrated his design, and strove to frustrate it by a rapid move from Vilna towards Polotsk on Barclay's flank, but he failed to cut into his line of march, and once more had to pursue.
Despite the heavy shrinkage in the Grand Army caused by a remorseless rush through a country wellnigh stripped of supplies, the Emperor sought to force on a general engagement. He hoped to catch Barclay at Vitepsk. "The whole Russian army is at Vitepsk—we are on the eve of great events," he writes on July 25th. But the Russians skilfully withdrew by night from their position in front of that town, which he entered on July 28th. Chagrined and perplexed, the chief stays a fortnight to organize supplies and stores, while his vanguard presses on to envelop the Russians at Smolensk. Again his hopes revive when he hears that Barclay and Bagration are about to join near that city. In fact, those leaders there concluded that strategic movement to the rear which was absolutely necessary if they were not to be overwhelmed singly. They viewed the retreat in a very different light. To the cautious Barclay it portended a triumph long deferred, but sure: while the more impulsive Muscovite looked upon the constant falling back as a national disgrace.