On the 18th of October, at the very moment that the cannon of Kutusoff were destroying Napoleon’s illusions of glory and of peace, Wittgenstein, at one hundred leagues in the rear of his left wing, had thrown himself upon Polotsk; Tchitchakof, behind his right, and two hundred leagues farther off, had taken advantage of his superiority over Schwartzenberg; and both of them, one descending from the north, and the other ascending from the south, were endeavouring to unite their forces at Borizof.

This was the most difficult passage in our retreat, and both these hostile armies were already close to it, at the time that Napoleon was at the distance of twelve days’ journey, with the winter, famine, and the grand Russian army between them.

At Smolensk it was only suspected that Minsk was in danger; the officers who were present at the loss of Polotsk gave the following details respecting it:—­

Ever since the battle of the 18th of August, which raised him to the dignity of marshal, Saint Cyr had remained on the Russian bank of the Duena, in possession of Polotsk, and of an entrenched camp in front of its walls.  This camp showed how easy it would have been for the whole army to have taken up its winter quarters on the frontiers of Lithuania.  Its barracks, constructed by our soldiers, were more spacious than the houses of the Russian peasantry, and equally warm:  they were beautiful military villages, properly entrenched, and equally protected from the winter and from the enemy.

For two months the two armies carried on merely a war of partizans.  With the French its object was to extend themselves through the country in search of provisions; on the part of the Russians, to strip them of what they found.  A war of this sort was entirely in favour of the Russians, as our people, being ignorant of the country as well as of the language, even of the names of the places where they attempted to enter, were incessantly betrayed by the inhabitants, and even by their guides.

In consequence of these checks, and of hunger, and disease, the strength of Saint Cyr’s army was diminished one half, while that of Wittgenstein had been more than doubled by the arrival of recruits.  By the middle of October, the Russian army at that point amounted to fifty-two thousand men, while ours was only seventeen thousand.  In this number must be included the 6th corps, or the Bavarians, reduced from twenty-two thousand to eighteen hundred men, and two thousand cavalry.  The latter were then absent; Saint Cyr being without forage, and uneasy respecting the attempts of the enemy upon his flanks, had sent them to a considerable distance up the river, with orders to return by the left bank, in order to procure subsistence and to gain intelligence.