Napoleon was even uncertain whether he should reach Borizof in time to meet the new peril, which Schwartzenberg’s hesitation seemed to have prepared for him.  We have seen that a third Russian army, that of Wittgenstein, menaced, on his right, the interval which separated him from that town; that he had sent the Duke of Belluno against him, and had ordered that marshal to retrieve the opportunity he had lost on the 1st of November, and to resume the offensive.

In obedience to these orders, on the 14th of November, the very day Napoleon quitted Smolensk, the Dukes of Belluno and of Reggio had attacked and driven back the out-posts of Wittgenstein towards Smoliantzy, preparing, by this engagement, for a battle which they agreed should take place on the following day.

The French were thirty thousand against forty thousand; there, as well as at Wiazma, the soldiers were sufficiently numerous, if they had not had too many leaders.

The two Marshals disagreed.  Victor wished to manoeuvre on the enemy’s left wing, to overthrow Wittgenstein with the two French corps, and march by Botscheikowo on Kamen, and from Kamen by Pouichna on Berezina.  Oudinot warmly disapproved of this plan, saying that it would separate them from the grand army, which required their assistance.

Thus, one of the leaders wishing to manoeuvre, and the other to attack in front, they did neither the one nor the other.  Oudinot retired during the night to Czereia, and Victor, discovering this retreat at daybreak, was compelled to follow him.

He halted within a day’s march of the Lukolmlia, near Sienno, where Wittgenstein did not much disturb him; but the Duke of Reggio having at last received the order dated from Dombrowna, which directed him to recover Minsk, Victor was about to be left alone before the Russian general.  It was possible that the latter would then become aware of his superiority:  and the Emperor, who at Orcha, on the 20th of November, saw his rear-guard, lost, his left flank menaced by Kutusoff, and his advance column stopped at the Berezina by the army of Volhynia, learned that Wittgenstein and forty thousand more enemies, far from being beaten and repulsed, were ready to fall upon his right, and that he had no time to lose.

But Napoleon was long before he could determine to quit the Boristhenes.  It appeared to him that this was like a second abandonment of the unfortunate Ney, and casting off for ever his intrepid companion in arms.  There, as he had done at Liady and Dombrowna, he was calling every hour of the day and night, and sending to inquire if no tidings had been heard of that marshal; but not a trace of his existence had transpired through the Russian army; four days this mortal silence had lasted, and yet the Emperor still continued to hope.