The scene-shifter was the Abbe de Pradt, Archbishop of Malines, whom Napoleon sent as ambassador to Warsaw, with elaborate instructions as to the summoning of the Diet, the whipping-up of Polish enthusiasm, the revolutionizing of Russian Poland, and the style of the address to him.  Nay, his passion for the regulation of details even led him to inform the ambassador that the imperial reply would be one of praise of Polish patriotism and of warning that Polish liberty could only be won by their “zeal and their efforts.”  The trickery was like that which he had played upon the Poles shortly before Eylau.  In effect, he said now, as then:  “Pour out your blood for me first, and I will do something for you.”  But on this occasion the scenic setting was more impressive, the rush of the Poles to arms more ardent, the diplomatic reply more astutely postponed, and the finale more awful.[262]

Still, the Poles marched on; but their devotion became more questioning.  The feelings of the Lithuanians were also ruffled by Napoleon’s reply to the Polish deputies:  nor were they consoled by his appointment of seven magnates to regulate the affairs of the districts of Lithuania, under the aegis of French commissioners, who proved to be the real governors.  Worst of all was the marauding of Napoleon’s troops, who, after their long habituation to the imperial maxim that “war must support war,” could not now see the need of enduring the pangs of hunger in order that Lithuanian enthusiasm might not cool.

[Illustration:  CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA]

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.