nd afterwards
successively upon Olzania, Vieznowo, Troki, Bolzoi, and Sobsnicki, they
came in contact with Davoust, and were forced to fall back upon their
main body. They then bent their course a little more in the rear and to
the right, and made a new attempt on Minsk, but there again they found
Davoust. A scanty platoon of that marshal's vanguard was entering by one
gate, when the advanced guard of Bagration presented itself at another;
on which, the Russian retreated once more into his marshes, towards the
south.

At this intelligence, observing Bagration and 40,000 Russians cut off
from the army of Alexander, and enveloped by two rivers and two armies,
Napoleon exclaimed, "I have them!" In fact, it only required three
marches more to have hemmed in Bagration completely. But Napoleon, who
since accused Davoust of suffering the escape of the left wing of the
Russians by remaining four days in Minsk, and afterwards, with more
justice, the king of Westphalia, had just then placed that monarch under
the orders of the marshal. It was this change, which was made too late,
and in the midst of an operation, which destroyed the unity of it.

This order arrived at the very moment when Bagration, repulsed from
Minsk, had no other retreat open to him than a long and narrow causeway.
It occurs on the marshes of Nieswig, Shlutz, Glusck, and Bobruisk.
Davoust wrote to the king to push the Russians briskly into this defile,
the outlet of which at Glusck he was about to occupy. Bagration would
never have been able to get out of it. But the king, already irritated
by the reproaches which the uncertainty and dilatoriness of his first
operations had brought upon him, could not suffer a subject to be his
commander; he quitted his army, without leaving any one to replace him,
or without even communicating, if we are to credit Davoust, to any of
his generals, the order which he had just received. He was permitted to
retire into Westphalia without his guard; which he accordingly did.

Meanwhile Davoust vainly waited for Bagration at Glusck. That general,
not being sufficiently pressed by the Westphalian army, had the option
of making a new _detour_ towards the south, to get to Bobruisk, and
there cross the Berezina, and reach the Boristhenes near Bickof. There
again, if the Westphalian army had had a commander, if that commander
had pressed the Russian leader more closely, if he had replaced him at
Bickof, when he came in collision with