Several persons have pretended that there was too much circumspection or too much negligence in the first operations of the invasion; that from the Vistula, the assailing army had received orders to march with all the precaution of one attacked; that the aggression once commenced, and Alexander having fled, the advanced guard of Napoleon ought to have re-ascended the two banks of the Vilia with more celerity and more in advance, and that the army of Italy should have followed this movement more closely.  Perhaps Doctorof, who commanded the left wing of Barclay, being forced to cross our line of attack, in order to fly from Lida toward Swentziany, might then have been made prisoner.  Pajol repulsed him at Osmiana; but he escaped by Smorgony.  Nothing but his baggage was taken; and Napoleon laid the blame of his escape on Prince Eugene, although he had himself prescribed to him every one of his movements.

But the army of Italy, the Bavarian army, the 1st corps and the guard, very soon occupied and surrounded Wilna.  There it was that, stretched out over his maps (which he was obliged to examine in that manner, on account of his short sight, which he shared with Alexander the Great and Frederic the Second), Napoleon followed the course of the Russian army; it was divided into two unequal masses:  one with its emperor towards Drissa, the other with Bagration, who was still in the direction of Myr.

Eighty leagues in front of Wilna, the Duena and the Boristhenes separate Lithuania from old Russia.  At first, these two rivers run parallel to each other from east to west, leaving between them an interval of about twenty-five leagues of an unequal, woody, and marshy soil.  They arrive in that manner from the interior of Russia, on its frontiers; at this point, at the same time, and as if in concert, they turn off; the one abruptly at Orcha towards the south; the other, near Witepsk, towards the north-west.  It is in that new direction that their course traces the frontiers of Lithuania and old Russia.

The narrow space which these two rivers leave between them before taking this opposite direction seems to constitute the entrance, and as it were the gates of Muscovy.  It is the focus of the roads which lead to the two capitals of that empire.

Napoleon’s whole attention was directed to that point.  By the retreat of Alexander upon Drissa, he foresaw that which Bagration would attempt to make from Grodno towards Witepsk, through Osmiana, Minsk, and Docktzitzy, or by Borizof; he determined to prevent it, and instantly pushed forward Davoust towards Minsk, between these two hostile bodies, with two divisions of infantry, the cuirassiers of Valence, and several brigades of light cavalry.