ecember eighteenth, he left St. Petersburg for
Vilna. He had in mind first to secure the fruits of victory by
energetic pursuit, then to sound the temper of Prussia and Austria.

Murat had left the remnant of the grand army over the Niemen on
December fourteenth; on the nineteenth he entered Koenigsberg. The day
before Macdonald had learned by a despatch from Berthier of the final
disasters to the Russian expedition, and on the twenty-eighth his van
reached Tilsit. The Prussian auxiliaries were in the rear under York,
who had been for nearly two months in regular communication with the
Czar, and knew the details of Napoleon's rout, as Macdonald did not.
Wittgenstein had been despatched to cut off Macdonald's retreat. But
with the dilatoriness which characterized all the Russian movements he
came too late, a single detachment under Diebitsch falling in with the
Prussians on their own territory. The Prussian general was in a
quandary; he was quite strong enough to have beaten Diebitsch, but his
soldiers were friendly to Russia and embittered against Napoleon. His
own sympathies being identical with those of his men, and considering
that he might in extremity plead his isolation, he therefore, on
December thirtieth, concluded the convention of Tauroggen, in which he
agreed to neutralize the district of Prussia which he occupied, and to
await orders from Berlin. Six days later an envoy arrived from
Frederick William, nominally to degrade York, in reality to conclude a
treaty of alliance with Russia.

By the assistance of Stein, who had been called from Vienna to counsel
the Czar, such a document was finally composed and signed at Kalish on
February twenty-eighth, 1813. Prussia and Germany were thus born again
under the auspices of Russia. It was by the Czar's authorization that
Stein began the reorganization of the provinces held by the Prussian
troops. These circumstances left Murat's positions at Dantzic and on
the Vistula untenable. Throughout the campaign he had been vastly more
concerned for his personal prestige than for Napoleon's cause, and he
was only too ready to leave a sinking ship. On January fifteenth, as
has already been told, after surrendering his command to Eugene at
Posen, he left for Naples. He was in haste, for on the twelfth the
Russians had entered the grand duchy of Warsaw on their way to its
capital. Schwarzenberg, with his own and the remnants of two other
corps,--those of Reynier and Poniatowski,