ht carry six thousand quintals of flour. The
battalion of heavy vehicles, drawn by oxen, carried four thousand eight
hundred quintals. There were besides twenty-six squadrons of waggons,
loaded with military equipages; a great quantity of waggons with tools
of all kinds, as well as thousands of artillery and hospital waggons,
one siege and six bridge equipages.

The provision-waggons were to take in their loading at the magazines
established on the Vistula. When the army passed that river, it was
ordered to provide itself, without halting, with provisions for
twenty-five days, but not to use them till they were beyond the Niemen.
In conclusion, the greater part of these means of transport failed,
either because the organization of soldiers, to act as conductors of
military convoys, was essentially vicious, the motives of honour and
ambition not being called into action to maintain proper discipline; or
chiefly because these vehicles were too heavy for the soil, the
distances too considerable, and the privations and fatigues too great;
certain it is that the greater number of them scarcely reached the
Vistula.

The army, therefore, provisioned itself on its match. The country being
fertile, waggons, cattle, and provisions of all kinds, were swept off;
every thing was taken, even to such of the inhabitants as were necessary
to conduct these convoys. Some days after, at the Niemen, the
embarrassment of the passage, and the celerity of the first hostile
marches, caused all the fruits of these requisitions to be abandoned
with an indifference only equalled by the violence with which they had
been seized.

The importance of the object, however, was such as might excuse the
irregularity of these proceedings. That object was to surprise the
Russian army, either collected or dispersed; in short, to make a
_coup-de-main_ with 400,000 men. War, the worst of all scourges, would
thus have been shortened in its duration. Our long and heavy
baggage-waggons would have encumbered our march. It was much more
convenient to live on the supplies of the country, as we should be able
to indemnify the loss afterwards. But superfluous wrong was committed as
well as necessary wrong, for who can stop midway in the commission of
evil? What chief could be responsible for the crowd of officers and
soldiers who were scattered through the country in order to collect its
resources? To whom were complaints to be addressed? Who was to punish?
All was