Macdonald saw all at once his force reduced from twenty-nine thousand to nine thousand, but in the state of anxiety in which he had been living for the last two days, any termination to it was a relief.

CHAP.  IX.

Thus commenced the defection of our allies.  I shall not venture to set myself up as a judge of the morality of this event; posterity will decide upon it.  As a contemporaneous historian, however, I conceive myself bound not only to state the facts, but also the impression they have left, and such as it still remains, in the minds of the principal leaders of the two corps of the allied army, either as actors or sufferers.

The Prussians only waited for an opportunity to break our alliance, which was forced upon them; when the moment arrived, they embraced it.  Not only, however, did they refuse to betray Macdonald, but they did not even wish to quit him, until they had, as it may be said, drawn him out of Russia and placed him in safety.  On his side, when Macdonald became sensible that he was abandoned, but without having positive proofs of it, he obstinately remained at Tilsit, at the mercy of the Prussians, sooner than give them a motive of defection, by too speedy a retreat.

The Prussians did not abuse this noble conduct.  There was defection on their part, but no treachery; which, in this age, and after the evils they had endured, may still appear meritorious; they did not join themselves with the Russians.  When they arrived on their own frontier, they could not resign themselves to aid their conqueror in defending their native soil against those who came in the character of their deliverers, and who were so; they became neutral, and this was not, I must repeat, until Macdonald, disengaged from Russia and the Russians, had his retreat free.

This marshal continued it from Koenigsberg, by Labiau and Tente.  His rear was protected by Mortier, and Heudelet’s division, whose troops, newly arrived, still occupied Insterburg, and kept Tchitchakof in check.  On the 3d of January he effected his junction with Mortier and covered Koenigsberg.

It was, however, a happy circumstance for Yorck’s reputation, that Macdonald, thus weakened, and whose retreat his defection had interrupted, was enabled to rejoin the grand army.  The inconceivable slowness of Wittgenstein’s march saved that marshal; the Russian general, however, overtook him at Labiau and Tente; and there, but for the efforts of Bachelu and his brigade, the valour of the Polish Colonel Kameski, and Captain Ostrowski, and the Bavarian Major Mayer, the corps of Macdonald, thus deserted, would have been broken or destroyed; in that case Yorck would appear to have betrayed him, and history would, with justice, have stigimatized him with the name of traitor.  Six hundred French, Bavarians, and Poles, remained dead on these two fields of battle; their blood accuses the Prussians for not having provided, by an additional article, for the safe retreat of the leader whom they had deserted.