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 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 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.