SEPARATE COLUMNS.

471

By July 2 Barclay had gathered his army at Sventsiani, without any fighting except Wittgenstein's. Doctorov was farthest off, and had difficulty in rejoining the army. A rearguard and the Cossacks near Grodno were cut off, and obliged to march south and join Bagration. Barclay reached Drissa July 11. Murat followed along, supported by Ney and Oudinot.

The emperor took up headquarters at Vilna, and there he remained many days, striving to bring order out of chaos, issuing orders to his distant lieutenants on belated information received from them, or on news from the enemy which was more so he found the direction of operations over so vast a territory different from anything he had yet encountered, and far more uncertain.

On June 29 Napoleon headed Murat, with Friant, Gudin, Nansouty and Montbrun, on Niemenchin; and Davout, with the three divisions left him, on Michalichki and Ochmiana, thus splitting the head of the Grand Army into separate columns so as to reconnoitre a wider space in his front, to keep apart the two Russian armies which he believed he had thrust apart, and to close the road to Smolensk. Had he been able to do the latter, the campaign of 1812 would have terminated in a marked success, for up to this moment Napoleon had shown a much broader view of the strategic situation than the Russians.

Davout soon ran across evidences of Barclay's left wing, under Doctorov, on the way to Ochmiana; this Napoleon took to be the head of Bagration's army marching towards Sventsiani; and on July 1 he instructed Davout, to whom Grouchy was ordered to report, to advance on this body, while Jerome, as he believed, was pushing on its rear, and Schwartzenberg was getting where he could turn its left. Doctorov had already caught the alarm, filed to the right, and escaped by a thirty-mile march, July 1, on Svir. Eugene

472

BAGRATION IN DANGER.

had got concentrated at Kroni; next day Jerome, with Poniatowski, Vandamme and Latour-Maubourg, had fully reached Grodno, where he found only a Cossack detachment,

Doctorov.

which fell back on Lida; Reynier was passing Sokoli, and Schwartzenberg was opposite Drogichin on the Bug. Oudinot was following Wittgenstein. On this day Barclay had reached Sventsiani with the right at Soloki, and the left under Doctorov all but cut off by Davout. The Russian objective was now Drissa, but Bagration, who was at Slonim, was still in dan

ger of being hemmed in between Davout and Jerome, for Barclay's plan to have him join at Sventsiani had been a miscalculation.

By the evening of July 1 the Guard was still in Vilna, Macdonald had reached Rossiani, Oudinot Vilkomir, and Ney Glinziski; Murat was at Niemenchin, Davout at Ochmiana and Michalichki. From the little information he could gather and the probabilities, Napoleon was convinced that Bagration could still be cut off unless he headed via Minsk towards the Dvina, until, on July 2, the body opposite Davout proved to be Doctorov. This left him in dense ignorance as to Bagration's whereabouts, and he hurried up Eugene towards Vilna, finding fault with his delay," notified of the general movement, it is ridiculous that he should have stayed without moving at Piloni," - although the viceroy had been

THE COUNTRY RAVAGED.

473

marching over country roads as deep as the worst in Virginia. "It would be difficult," he wrote July 7, "to conceive an idea of the obstacles which this road presented, entirely formed by the trunks of pine-trees placed upon a marshy soil." Corduroy roads were common in Russia, as they are in every new country. The advance had been seriously interfered with by a violent storm on June 29, followed by a five days' rain. Possible bad weather must always be one of the calculations in campaigning; and although this storm did not arrest the troops, it did nearly stop the teaming. The ill-fed horses fell by the thousands, there was no bread, and between starvation and the danger of punishment for pillaging, the soldier did not hesitate. The entire country was ravaged.

Although puzzled by lack of information, Napoleon's effort still was to cut off and destroy Bagration's fifty thousand men, which would leave Barclay at his mercy. But this could be accomplished only by the push of the 1796 Bonaparte. Had his physique been that of his earlier years, he would have ridden to Davout's column - what was forty miles to him? —and ascertained the actual facts; he would have so disposed Jerome's forces, or have had them so commanded, as to hurl them on the rear of Bagration, while Davout cut off his head of column. But the emperor was no longer that Bonaparte. In the midst of his life of hard work, he had found time to indulge his passions, not always in the most creditable way; and now the result of overtaxing his vitality by pleasure, in addition to constant labor, had become apparent in bodily ailments which made him unready to move about, and especially to remain many successive hours in the saddle. His endurance of fatigue and weather had much diminished; the exceptional heat of this July had almost equaled that of Egypt, where many of the rank and file committed suicide as they began again to do here. Napoleon was no longer the thin, nervous,

474

THE PERSONAL ELEMENT.

active general of a dozen years before; instead of seeing things himself, he remained in Vilna directing affairs by couriers, upon information both late and partial; and as might have been expected, his work was ill done.

It may be said that this criticism of the emperor's bodily strength is unwarranted; but there is no reproach intended to be conveyed. Every man must lose his activity sooner or later. The question before us is only whether the growing loss of daily and hourly physical vigor, of the ability to get about, and of the insistence on seeing things with his own eyes, did or did not seriously affect the Great Captain's later campaigns. There is no intention to hold Napoleon responsible for bodily ailments, although much has been written by others on the subject. One purpose of this History of the Art of War, from Cyrus' day down, is to discover to what degree the personal element influences the operations of war. The great captain's equipment consists of intellect, character and opportunity, each to an exceptional degree and all working together. To ascertain how much each has counted in any given operation, and whether each remains at its best, is part of the problem before us. From this point of view the frequent dwelling upon the emperor's inability, from whatever cause, to do as much work as he had formerly done, is a necessary step in our study. That some may not agree in the conclusion drawn is no reason why the fact should not be pointed out.

Nor was this the worst evil. If large and distant bodies were to be subject only to general direction from headquarters, their leaders should be the best men to be had. But here Jerome, solely because he was his brother, had been placed at the head of three army corps; and Jerome was not only devoid of military talent, he was a lover of his ease. How could Napoleon expect him to do the wise, energetic thing? In 1805 he had written Soult from Milan: "There