ds from
the town of Grodno on the Upper Niemen. Their convergence would drive
Bagration into the almost trackless marshes of the Pripet, whence his
force would emerge, if at all, as helpless units.

Such was Napoleon's plan, and it would have succeeded but for a
miscalculation in the time needed for Jerome's march. Napoleon
underrated the difficulties of his advance or else overrated his
brother's military capacity. The King of Westphalia was delayed a few
days at Grodno by bad weather and other difficulties; thus Bagration,
who had been ordered by the Czar to retire, was able to escape the
meshes closing around him by a speedy retreat to Bobruisk, whence he
moved northwards. Napoleon was enraged at this loss of a priceless
opportunity, and addressed vehement reproaches to Jerome for his
slowness and "small-mindedness." The youngest of the Bonapartes
resented this rebuke which ignored the difficulties besetting a rapid
advance. The prospect of being subjected to that prince of martinets,
Davoust, chafed his pride; and, throwing up his command, he forthwith
returned to the pleasures of Cassel.

By great good fortune, Bagration's force had escaped from the snares
strewn in its path by the strategy of Phull and the counter-moves of
Napoleon. The fickle goddess also favoured the rescue of the chief
Russian army from imminent peril at Drissa. In pursuance of Phull's
scheme, the Czar and Barclay de Tolly fell back with that army towards
the intrenched camp on the Dwina. But doubts had already begun to
haunt their minds as to the wisdom of Phull's plans. In fact, the bias
of Barclay's nature was towards the proven and the practical. He came
of a Scottish family which long ago had settled in Livonia, and had
won prosperity and esteem in the trade of Riga. His ancestry and his
early surroundings therefore disposed him to the careful weighing of
evidence and distrust of vague theories. His thoroughness in military
organization during the war in Finland and his unquestioned probity
and open-mindedness, had recently brought him high into favour with
the Czar, who made him War Minister. He had no wide acquaintance with
the science of warfare, and has been judged altogether deficient in a
wide outlook on events and in those masterly conceptions which mark
the great warrior.[263] But nations are sometimes ruined by lofty
genius, while at times they may be saved by humdrum prudence; and
Barclay's common sense had no small share in sa