“What do you require more? that our countrymen should throng your passage; bring you their grain and cattle; that they should offer themselves completely armed and ready to follow you?  Alas! what have they to give you?  Your pillagers take all; there is not even time for them to make you the offer.  Turn your eyes round towards the entrance of the imperial head-quarters.  Do you see that man?  He is all but naked; he groans and extends towards you a hand of supplication.  That unhappy man who excites your pity, is one of those very nobles whose assistance you look for:  yesterday, he was hurrying to meet you, full of ardour, with his daughter, his vassals, and his wealth; he was coming to present himself to your emperor; but he met with some Wurtemberg pillagers on his way, and was robbed of every thing; he is no longer a father,—­he is scarcely a man.”

Every one shuddered, and hurried to assist him; Frenchmen, Germans, Lithuanians, all agreed in deploring those disorders, for which no one could suggest a remedy.  How, in fact, was it possible to restore discipline among such immense masses, so precipitately propelled, conducted by so many leaders of different manners, characters, and countries, and forced to resort to plunder for subsistence?

In Prussia, the emperor had only caused the army to supply itself with provisions for twenty days.  This was as much as was necessary for the purpose of gaining Wilna by a battle.  Victory was to have done the rest, but that victory was postponed by the retreat of the enemy.  The emperor might have waited for his convoys; but as by surprising the Russians he had separated them, he did not wish to forego his grasp and lose his advantage.  He, therefore, pushed forward on their track 400,000 men, with twenty days’ provisions, into a country which was incapable of feeding the 20,000 Swedes of Charles XII.

It was not for want of foresight; for immense convoys of oxen followed the army, either in herds, or attached to the provision cars.  Their drivers had been organized into battalions.  It is true that the latter, wearied with the slow pace of these heavy animals, either slaughtered them, or suffered them to die of want.  A great number, however, got as far as Wilna and Minsk; some reached Smolensk, but too late; they could only be of service to the recruits and reinforcements which followed us.

On the other hand, Dantzic contained so much corn, that she alone might have fed the whole army; she also supplied Koenigsberg.  Its provisions had ascended the Pregel in large barges up to Vehlau, and in lighter craft as far as Insterburg.  The other convoys went by land-carriage from Koenigsberg to Labiau, and from thence, by means of the Niemen and the Vilia, to Kowno and Wilna.  But the water of the Vilia having shrunk so much through drought as to be incapable of floating these transports, it became necessary to find other means of conveyance.

Napoleon hated jobbers.  It was his wish that the administration of the army should organize the Lithuanian waggons; 500 were assembled, but the appearance of them disgusted him.  He then permitted contracts to be made with the Jews, who are the only traders in the country; and the provisions stopped at Kowno at last arrived at Wilna, but the army had already left it.