Napoleon accordingly decided; but his decision, without being rash, was grand and bold, like the enterprise itself.  Having determined to detach himself from Oudinot, he first caused him to be reinforced by Saint-Cyr’s corps, and ordered him to connect himself with the Duke of Tarentum; having resolved also to march against the enemy, he did it by changing in front of him, and within his reach, but without his knowledge, the line of his operations at Witepsk for that of Minsk.  His manoeuvre was so well combined; he had accustomed his lieutenants to so much punctuality, secrecy, and precision, that in four days, while the surprised hostile army could find no traces of the French army before it, the latter would by this plan find itself in a mass of 185,000 men on the left flank and rear of that enemy, which but just before had presumed to think of surprising him.

Meantime, the extent and the multiplicity of the operations, which on all sides claimed Napoleon’s presence, still detained him at Witepsk.  It was only by his letters, that he could make his presence universally felt.  His head alone laboured for the whole, and he indulged himself in the thought that his urgent and repeated orders would suffice to make nature herself obedient to him.

The army only subsisted by its exertions, and from day to day; it had not provisions for twenty-four hours:  Napoleon ordered that it should provide itself for fifteen days.  He was incessantly dictating letters.  On the 10th of August he addressed eight to the prince of Eckmuehl, and almost as many to each of his other lieutenants.  In the first, he concentrates every thing round himself, in conformity with his leading principle, “that war is nothing else than the art of assembling on a given point, a larger number of men than your enemy.”  It was in this spirit that he wrote to Davoust:  “Send for Latour-Maubourg.  If the enemy remain at Smolensk, as I have reason to suppose, it will be a decisive affair, and we cannot have too much numerical strength.  Orcha will become the pivot of the army.  Every thing leads me to believe that there will be a great battle at Smolensk; hospitals will, therefore, be requisite; they will be necessary at Orcha, Dombrowna, Mohilef, Kochanowo, Bobr, Borizof, and Minsk.”

It was then particularly that he manifested extreme anxiety about the provisioning of Orcha.  It was on the 10th of August, at the very moment when he was dictating this letter, that he gave his order of march.  In four days, all his army would be assembled on the left bank of the Boristhenes, and in the direction of Liady.  He departed from Witepsk on the 13th, after having remained there a fortnight.

BOOK VI.

CHAPTER I.

It was the check at Inkowo which decided Napoleon; ten thousand Russian horse, in an affair with the advanced guard, had overthrown Sebastiani and his cavalry.  The intrepidity and reputation of the defeated general, his report, the boldness of the attack, the hope, nay the urgent necessity, of a decisive engagement, all led the emperor to believe, that their numbers alone had carried the day, that the Russian army was between the Duena and the Dnieper, and that it was marching against the centre of his cantonments:  this was actually the fact.