Before re-opening the great campaign, Buonaparte received the submission and explanation of the Elector of Saxony, who truly stated that Prussia had forced him to take part in the war.  The apology was accepted, and from this time the Elector adhered to the League of the Rhine, and was a faithful ally of Napoleon.  The Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel had worse fortune.  The answer to all his applications was, that he had ceased to reign.  What use the Conqueror designed to make of the territories thus confiscated, we shall presently see.  The Saxon army, and that of Hesse-Cassel, were both, however, at his disposal, and they both accordingly were marched forwards, and blended with the forces occupying Prussia.

The French, having invested Glogau, Breslau, and Graudentz, and left detachments to urge these sieges, moved towards the Polish frontier.  General Bennigsen, with a considerable Russian army, had advanced to overawe the dissatisfied population, and was now at Warsaw.  But the march of the French van, under Murat, soon alarmed him in these quarters.  After some skirmishes of little moment the Russians retired behind the Vistula, and Murat took possession of the Polish metropolis on the 28th of November.  On the 25th Napoleon himself had reached Posen, and found himself surrounded by a population in a high state of excitement and enthusiasm.  The ancient national dress reappeared:  hope and exultation beamed in every countenance; the old nobles, quitting the solitary castles in which they had been lamenting over the downfall of Poland, crowded the levees of the Victor, and addressed him in language which recalled the half-oriental character and manners of their nation.  “We adore you,” said the Palatine of Gnesna, “and with confidence repose in you all our hopes, as upon him who raises empires and destroys them, and humbles the proud—­the regenerator of our country, the legislator of the universe.”  “Already,” said the President of the Council of Justice, “already our country is saved, for we adore in your person the most just and the most profound Solon.  We commit our fate into your hands, and implore the protection of the most august Caesar.”

Having largely recruited his armies with brave Poles, who fancied him both a Solon and Caesar, Napoleon now moved forwards.  General Bennigsen found himself under the necessity of abandoning first the line of the Vistula, and then that of the Bug, and, the French still advancing in numbers not to be resisted by his division, at length threw himself behind the river Wkra, where Kaminskoy, the Russian commander-in-chief, and three other divisions of the army, had by this time taken their ground.  On the 23rd of December Napoleon reached and crossed the Wkra, and Kaminskoy ordered his whole army to fall back upon the line of the Niemen.  Bennigsen accordingly retired towards Pultusk, Galitzin upon Golymin, both followed by great bodies of the French, and both sustaining with imperturbable patience and gallantry the severity of a march through probably the very worst roads in Europe, and of frequent skirmishes with their pursuers.  But the minor divisions of D’Anrep and Bexhouden retreated without keeping up the requisite communications with either Bennigsen or Galitzin, and consequently suffered considerably, though the matter was grossly exaggerated in the French bulletins.