ningsen, amounting to four thousand men, had at length crossed the Vistula, and arrived at Praga on the 13th of November, whence they pushed on to the river Drzura. Their reconnoitring parties, however, on advancing along the road towards Posen and Thorn, soon ascertained the great superiority and rapid march of the enemy. In these circumstances general Benningsen speedily retired from Praga, having experienced some loss in detached parties and out posts, and re-crossed the Vistula; after which he entirely destroyed the bridge.

About the close of November, the divisions of that French army which had arrived at Warsaw and its vicinity constituted a consider. able force. To substitute a bridge for that which the Russians had destroyed was one of the first objects; which required considerable time, and was at length completed of boats. Every effort was made, in conformity to the orders of the French emperor, to place the works of Praga in a perfect state of defence, the superintendence of which was committed to the general of engineers, who erected eight redoubts with pallisades, and bastions, enclosing a space of 1500 toises, and constituting in the whole an intrenched camp of peculiar strength. From the eastern bank of the Vistula, a corps of marshal Davoust's division pushed on to ward the Bug, where they covered themselves by a tête du pont, and completed a bridge over the river, and afterwards proceeded on to the village of Pomikow, which a body of Russian troops attacked, but which the French eventually occupied and maintained.

After the retreat of Benningsen over the Vistula he still continued

to recede; not only as his forces, even when joined with those of Buxhovden, would be considerably inferior to the forces of the enemy, but also on the general idea of the desirableness of drawing on the French as far as possible into Poland. The general in chief of the Russians, however, Kamenskoi, having at length arrived at the Russian camp, by no means ap proved of these delays and cautions, and seemed to consider the honour of the army as tarnished by its receding before the enemy, who would not fail, it was observed, to ascribe this to fear, and would derive considerable advantage from the high-spirited confidence which such an idea would excite in them. The king of Prussia, too, was somewhat indisposed to procrastination, and imagined, that the longer his capital remained in the power of the enemy, the less anxious it might be to receive again its former master. Soon after the arrival therefore of Kamenskoi, from St. Petersburg, which was celebrated by the troops with the strongest demonstrations of joy, and inspired unbounded hopes of success, the retrograde movements of the army were checked, and they began to advance, having their head quarters at Pultusk. They were ordered to prevent the French from passing the Narew, to retake Praga, and to fix their station on the banks of the Vistula. Amidst the joy at general Kamenskoi's arrival, however, the Narew was actually passed by a French detachment of 800 men at its junction with the Ukra; and Bonaparte, who had quitted Posen on the first indication of this disposition in the Russians for offensive operations, arranged the various divisions of his army accordingly. Marshal Ney had been

for

for some time in possession of Thorn. He united the different corps at Gallup. Marshal Bessieres, with the second corps of reserve cavalry, proceeded from Thorn to Biezun. Bernadotte proceeded with his division to support them. Marshal Soult passed the Vistula opposite Plock, and marshal Augereau at Lackrocyn, where a bridge was erected by the greatest exertions, which also were employed to establish one over the Narew. The latter being completed, the reserve of cavalry passed by the Vistula at Praga, followed by the emperor, on their march to the Narew, where the whole force of marshal Davoust was collected. An engagement almost immediately took place. The event of the day was in favour of the French, in consequence of the injudicious arrangements of the Russian general, whose retreat was accomplished after the loss of 1600 prisoners, and 25 pieces of

cannon.

Over a corps of Prussians, consisting of six thousand infantry and one thousand cavalry, considerable success was obtained by a corps of marshal Ney at Soldaw; while marshal Bessieres took several pieces of cannon and five hundred prisoners from another detachment of the same troops, breaking their line, and driving them into the morasses, near the village of Carmeden. These successes, however, were only preliminary to an affair of more importance, which closed the military operations of the year, and which occurred on the 26th of December in the vicinity of Pultusk. In the morning of that day marshal Lannes arrived opposite to Pultusk, where the whole corps of general Benningsen had assembled during the night. About

ten the attack was commenced by the marshal, and was received by the Russians with great firmness. The contest lasted with considerable vicissitude for some time, and with great obstinacy, but at length terminated in the rout of the Russians. General Buxhovden, in the mean time, about noon, had assembled the different corps of his army at Golymin. Several divisions which had been beaten the evening before, had now reached the camp, particularly one from Nasielsk, pursued by marshal Davoust so closely that he charged them near Golymin, and afterwards took up his position in an adjoining wood. Augereau, arriving at the same time,, took the enemy in flank, while another French general deprived the Russians of a point of support which they derived from a village, and at three o'clock the division of general Hendelet formed in line and advanced against the Russian army. The fire was extremely hot, and the contest lasted, notwithstanding several impetuous and successful charges of the duke of Berg's cavalry, till eleven o'clock; when a retreat was ordered by the Russian commander to Ostrolenka. Marshal Soult had in the mean while arrived so near the scene of action, that, if the slough following the rain and thaw had not extremely impeded his further progress, scarcely any portion of the Russian army could have escaped destruction. This circumstance checked the accomplishment of a plan which would have completed the fate of the Russian army on this side the Orege. The loss in both these actions, on the part of the French, was admited to have been scarcely less than three thousand men: that of the Russians con

.

sisted of about twelve thousand killed, wounded, and taken, eighty pieces of cannon, and about twelve hundred baggage waggons; and was followed, as the Russians them selves were obliged to allow, by the immediate retreat of their army. This retreat was the signal for the French troops to enter into winter quarters: and those of marshals Ney, Bernadotte and Bessieres, were almost immediate ly cantoned on the left bank of the river Orege, while marshal Soult with three brigades of light horse was stationed on the right bank for their protection.

The king of Prussia, to whom it seems necessary again to recur, while all these events were taking place, was experiencing a state of suspense and embarrassment, which, although arising from his own culpable policy, could not but excite sentiments of commiseration. He had proceeded from the grand scene of defeat to Custrin, and thence to Osterode and Koningsberg. His queen and family, with a long train of attendants and nobility, sought an asylum first at Dantzic, and afterwards at Memel, where the death of one of the young princes combined with all the other circumstances of family affliction. It ought however to have been noticed, before this, that it was not without several efforts to recover possession of Berlin that his Prussian majesty felt himself obliged to sustain this exile. After the disaster of Jena, the road to the very heart of his dominions had been opened to the conquerors; and it was obvious, that without very considerable sacrifices he could not obtain a peace. After the failure of one overture, he dispatched his minister Lucchesini, together with gene

ral Zastrow, to Berlin, with greater concessions; and the conditions now proposed became the basis of a preliminary treaty, which was signed by the representatives of the king and Bonaparte. But it was soon found by the monarch that the French, notwithstanding this preliminary treaty, proceeded to new acquisitions, to inundate the garrison places on the Oder with their troops, to excite insurrec tions in South Prussia by inflam matory proclamations, to plunder the royal property wherever it was found, and to swear the subjects of Prussia to allegiance to the emperor of France. The formally concluded basis of peace was after this set aside; an armistice was then proposed by the French, in which their increased possessions since the treaty led to enlarged demands, which, however, the plenipotentiaries of the king thought themselves bound to yield to, from the emergency of circumstances. This however the king refused to ratify, alleging that the advance of the French on the Vistula precluded him from complying with its conditions; that, the fron tiers of Russia being now threatened by the French, he was unable to stop the march of her forces. The allegation, however, of the impossibility to comply with the armistice, must obviously be interpreted into a determination of his majesty to try still further the fortune of war under the banner of his ally. Every effort was made by him to give effect to this chance; and considering the facility with which even the slightest promises of favourable change are caught at by the unhappy, it could not ap pear surprising that the approach of the Russian armies, and the idea of a general rising among the brave

Silesians,

Silesians, should have inspired a hope, which was in truth the cause of the non-ratification of the armistice; and it was to be deplored that, during the hostilities which followed this refusal, to the conclusion of the year, circumstances appeared so little likely to gratify it.

Within little more than two months from the commencement of the campaign, the successes of the French were almost unprecedented in the records of history. It cannot appear extremely surprising, that this success should have operated on a people peculiarly impressible by every thing calculated to excite exultation and gratify national vanity, so as to raise them to the highest pitch of triumph, and that they should be enraptured at having for their great nation so illustrious a head; nor that Bonaparte should himself, at the contemplation of that superiority which he obtained in his conflicts, adopt frequently a style of decided prophecy, and dictation, approaching at least to the most mortifying arrogance. The forces of an immense empire were under his uncontrolled direction, and he was able to avail himself of them to their fullest extent. There was no opposition to his projects, no collision with his interest. The decisions of his cabinet, or rather of his closet, instead of being obliged to await the forms of slow deliberation, the fluctuations of remote caprice, tending to dissipate the most valuable energies, sprang with all their bloom and freshness into immediate action. The adjustment of all his plans, the appointment of all his agents depended solely on himself. When to this circumstance, so calculated to sim

plify the working of the vast ma chine, to produce not counteraction but effective and complete co-operation, is added his profound knowledge of the machine itself, the success of this extraordinary man will appear less mysterious than many, who have thought it necessary to call in fortune or destiny to their assistance, have actually felt it. In the coalitions which he has had to encounter, this simplicity, in the midst of complication, has in a great measure, doubtless, necessarily been deficient. Instead of being brought to bear with accumulated force against the enemy, one party has arrived on the scene of conflict just after the destruction of another with which it ought to have cooperated; and thus, instead of putting a knife to the throat of the enemy, has only supplied a fresh repast for his inordinate ambition. In the case of Prussia, indeed, concert had not been formed till ruin was almost absolutely incurred; and her folly was only the more apparent from those miserable arrangements which had depended solely on herself. But, whether in solitary or concerted opposition, it has been the fortune of Bonaparte to find nearly as much delay and hesitation, as much temerity and improvidence, as he has himself shown skill, vigilance, and dispatch; and the contest has been, not a conflict upon equal terms of intellectual energy, in which physical prowess or unforeseen casualty determined the result, but one of those illustrations which the events of the world. have perpetually presented, of the superiority which a strong mind must ever obtain over a weak one.