As good luck would have it, Steingell slept soundly at the noise of this battle, although he might have heard even the shouts of the Russian militia.  He seconded the attack of Wittgenstein during that night as little as Wittgenstein had seconded his the day before.  It was not until Wittgenstein had finished on the right side, that the bridge of Polotsk was broken down, and Saint Cyr, with all his force on the left bank, and then fully able to cope with Steingell, that the latter began to put himself in motion.  But De Wrede, with 6,000 French, surprised him in his first movement, beat him back several leagues into the woods which he had quitted, and took or killed 2,000 of his men.

CHAP.  II.

Those three days were days of glory.  Wittgenstein was repulsed, Steingell defeated, and ten thousand Russians, with six generals, killed or put hors du combat.  But Saint Cyr was wounded, the offensive was lost, confidence, joy, and plenty reigned in the enemy’s corps, despondency and scarcity in ours; it was necessary to fall back.  The army required a commander:  De Wrede aspired to be so, but the French generals refused even to enter into concert with that officer, from a knowledge of his character, and a belief that it was impossible to go on harmoniously with him.  Amidst their jarring pretensions Saint Cyr, although wounded, was obliged to retain the command of these two corps.

Immediately after, he gave orders to retreat on Smoliantzy by all the roads leading to that place.  He himself kept in the centre, regulating the march of the different columns by that of each other.  This was a mode of retreat completely contrary to that which Napoleon had just followed.

Saint Cyr’s object was to find more provisions, to march with greater freedom, and more concert; in short, to avoid that confusion which is so common in the march of numerous columns, when troops, artillery, and baggage are crowded together on one road.  He completely succeeded.  Ten thousand French, Swiss, and Croats, with fifty thousand Russians at their heels, retired slowly in four columns, without allowing themselves to be broken, and kept Wittgenstein and Steingell from advancing more than three marches in eight days.

By retreating in this manner towards the south, they covered the right flank of the road from Orcha to Borizof, by which the Emperor was returning from Moscow.  One column only, that of the left, met with a check.  It was that of De Wrede and his fifteen hundred Bavarians, augmented with a brigade of French cavalry, which he retained with him in spite of Saint Cyr’s orders.  He marched at his own pleasure; his wounded pride would no longer suffer him to yield obedience to others; but it cost him the whole of his baggage.  Afterwards, under pretence of better serving the common cause by covering the line of operations from Wilna to Witepsk, which the Emperor had abandoned, he separated himself from the second corps, retreated by Klubokoe on Vileika, and made himself useless.