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If Napoleon did not want revolution, he did want troops. He had hoped that many Polish officers and men in Russian service would desert to join up with their brothers on the French side, and although some did, the numbers were disappointing. In Lithuania he intended
to raise five regiments of foot and five of horse, a total of 17,000 men, as well as a large national guard to keep order in his rear. He could probably have raised twice that number, but he would have had to produce some funds as well as a firm promise of the country’s future independence. In the event, no more than 12 to 15,000 joined up.
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Napoleon not only mishandled the locals, he failed to inspire confidence in them. ‘This man will not achieve any more great things, he is assailed by some malingering illness,’ noted the rector’s brother, the distinguished naturalist and physician Jedrzej Sniadecki, after observing Napoleon at length. And his attempt to charm the aristocracy went down poorly. ‘It was as impossible for Napoleon to emulate Alexander’s perfect amiability in a drawing room as it would have been for Alexander to defy the talent and genius of Napoleon on the battlefield,’ as Countess Tiesenhausen put it.
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But Franco – Polish relations were not all bad. Captain Fantin des Odoards of the Grenadiers of the Guard confessed to being ‘enraptured’ at a ball given in Vilna by the patriotic Count Pac as, ‘in the sweet embrace of the waltz’, he made out ‘how white and rounded were the things that swayed this way and that under the national colours’.
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Castellane, the duty officer who had been sent off on 1 July, had immense difficulty finding Nansouty. The roads were atrocious, there were no signposts of any sort, and there was nobody of whom to ask the way, as the already sparse population had fled to avoid the marauders, whom he himself had to dodge as well. His case was by no means exceptional. Napoleon was operating in huge army corps at distances that would have presented a problem in well-mapped areas with good roads. In the present circumstances, the problem assumed vast proportions as couriers and staff officers struggled to find their way down sandy roads, through boggy wilderness and interminable forests. It was extremely difficult for them to locate the commanders they were looking for, as they were themselves on the move, and many
of the troops encountered along the way were not familiar enough with the marshals and generals to recognise them, not to mention the fact that some of them could not speak French. This meant that Napoleon could not act or react as fast as he was wont to, which frustrated his designs.

Jérôme had got off to a slow start, which allowed Bagration time to begin an orderly withdrawal. The Second Army left its positions on the same day Napoleon entered Vilna, moving in a north-north-easterly direction in order to join up with Barclay. But on 4 July Bagration discovered that Davout had cut across his line of retreat, so he swerved to the south and made for Minsk. On 4 July a courier arrived at Napoleon’s headquarters with a letter from Jérôme which contained no useful information, only complaints. Napoleon was annoyed. ‘You tell me neither the number of Bagration’s divisions, nor their names, nor the places where they were stationed, nor any of the information you will have found at Grodno, nor what you are doing,’ he fumed. ‘It is impossible to make war in this manner.’ The following day he told Berthier to send Jérôme further instructions. ‘You will tell him that it would be impossible to manoeuvre more ineptly than he has,’ he added.
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Davout reached Minsk before Bagration and paused there for three days to tidy up his forces. Bagration had also paused, at Nieshviezh. He was in a trap, with Jérôme’s three army corps behind him and Davout barring his way. Had Jérôme pressed forward with energy, Bagration would have been done for. But Jérôme found the difficulties of the terrain beyond him, and could not bring his main forces up fast enough. When the Polish lancers of his advance guard finally did make contact with the Russians, at Mir, they were given a drubbing by Platov’s cossacks.
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Bagration then turned south and slipped out of the trap.

Napoleon could hardly contain his frustration. ‘If you had the most elementary grasp of soldiering, you would have been on the 3rd where you were on the 6th, and several events which would have resulted from my calculations would have given me a fine campaign,’ he wrote to Jérôme. ‘But you know nothing, and not only do you consult nobody, you allow yourself to be guided by selfish motives.’ He also reprimanded Prince Eugène for his sluggishness and failure to press the Russians. To Poniatowski, who had explained his inability to pursue the enemy by lack of food and fodder, he had Berthier write that ‘the Emperor can only be pained to discover that the Poles are such poor soldiers and have so little spirit as to bring up such paltry privations’.
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The failure to cut off and destroy Bagration was entirely Napoleon’s own fault. It had been his idea, politically motivated, to place his brother, who had never been to war, in command of three army corps, one of which was commanded by the only slightly more experienced Eugène. There had been problems between Jérôme
and General Vandamme, who as his chief of staff was supposed to command the corps for him, and whom he summarily dismissed. There had also been friction between Poniatowski and Jérôme.

To cap it all, Napoleon had instructed Davout to oversee the combined operation of the various units operating against Bagration, but had failed to apprise Jérôme of this, with the result that Jérôme at first refused to carry out Davout’s orders and then, in a fit of pique, decided to go home, taking his royal guards with him. On 16 July he began his march back to Cassel. ‘You have made me miss the fruit of my cleverest calculations, and the best opportunity that will have presented itself in this war,’ Napoleon wrote to him. He was far better off without him. But for good measure, he reproved Davout for his handling of the situation.
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In the circumstances, he might have derived some comfort from what was going on at Russian headquarters.

Shortly after leaving Vilna, Alexander wrote to Barclay saying that he would give no more orders and implicitly handing over command to him. But in breathtaking contradiction to this, he went on issuing instructions. To Barclay himself he penned letters going into matters as minute as how much forage each cart should carry. To others, who were under Barclay’s command, he sent orders and demanded reports without bothering to notify the unfortunate commander.
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The large number of advisers and officers without specific duties who surrounded the Tsar felt they had to justify their positions. ‘Project followed project, plans and dispositions, each one contradicting the other, each entailing envy and slander, disturbing the peace of mind of the commander-in-chief,’ noted A.N. Muraviov, an officer on Barclay’s staff. ‘In the Tsar’s entourage everyone was bent on getting himself noticed and showing off his importance,’ concurred Friedrich von Schubert, a young staff officer. ‘From every side advice and campaign plans were proposed and it took all of Barclay’s steadiness not to lose his head while warding off all the fresh projects and the budding intrigues against himself.’ Barclay himself described
headquarters as ‘a real wasps’ nest of intrigue’ in a letter to his wife. Grand Duke Constantine held his own court at his divisional headquarters, badmouthing Barclay and supporting all those who attacked him. Bennigsen and a dozen other ill-wishers were constantly slipping poison into the Tsar’s ear and imputing every conceivable mistake or neglect to Barclay. Alexander would then tax the commander with these.
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Barclay had taken something of a risk by appointing a new chief of staff, Colonel Aleksei Petrovich Yermolov. He was a tall, striking man with small, deepset grey eyes and a Roman profile, a firebrand popular with the lower ranks, and sometimes referred to as ‘the hero of the subalterns’. Barclay knew that Yermolov was an old friend of Bagration and a hater of all the ‘Germans’ in the army. But Yermolov was intelligent and highly competent, and would not let this affect his ability to collaborate with them. Barclay had also just appointed as his quartermaster the thirty-five-year-old Colonel Karl Friedrich von Toll, whom Yermolov learned to value, even if he considered him opinionated and a little too pleased with himself. And it is more than likely that Yermolov’s appointment was intended to capture some good will from Bagration.
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Before leaving Vilna, Barclay had written to Bagration asking him to move back fast in order to bring the two armies together. Indignant at being ordered to retreat, the fiery Bagration vented his fury to anyone who would listen. ‘We were brought to the frontier, scattered along it like pawns, then, after they had all sat there, mouths wide open, shitting along the whole length of the border, off they fled,’ he wrote to Yermolov. ‘It all disgusts me so much it’s driving me crazy.’ To Arakcheev, he wrote that they should have attacked rather than retreating, and gave voice to a suspicion he would do much to propagate. ‘You won’t convince anyone in the army or in Russia that we have not been
betrayed,
’ he wrote.
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Although the Tsar complained that Bagration was not moving fast enough, or in the right direction, he would not order him to obey Barclay’s instructions, with the result that Bagration felt himself
entirely at liberty to ignore them. In the event, this probably saved the Second Army, as Bagration selected his own priority, of getting out of Davout’s trap, over Barclay’s of bringing the two forces together at all costs. But the commander could hardly be expected to appreciate this.

His own retreat was being carried out with orderliness and deliberation – the one thing Barclay did have control over was the First Army itself, and he quite reasonably decided that he must preserve its integrity and battleworthiness at all costs. A hurried retreat would threaten both – stragglers and materiel would get left behind and fall into enemy hands if the columns marched any faster. The French were impressed by the orderliness of his withdrawal, and surprised at how few abandoned wagons they encountered. There were far fewer stragglers than might be expected, and his only significant losses were 10,000 or so soldiers recruited in the Lithuanian provinces who deserted, either to go home or to join the advancing Polish units.
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Alexander himself felt no great sense of urgency as the First Army fell back, and his remarkable complacency was reflected in his entourage. ‘Generally, everything is going well,’ Nesselrode wrote to his wife shortly after quitting Vilna. ‘Do not be frightened by our retreat,
on n’a reculé que pour mieux sauter.
’ The Tsar was cheered by the arrival of Leo von Lützow, a Prussian guards officer who had been cashiered in 1806. He had entered Austrian service in 1809 in order to carry on fighting the French, and after the defeat of Austria he had gone to Spain. He was taken prisoner by the French at Valencia in 1811, but managed to escape from prison in the south of France and made his way on foot, via Switzerland, Germany and Poland, to Russia, where he now offered his sword to the Tsar. It was eloquent evidence of what Alexander had come to represent in the minds of many Europeans. ‘Now that the war has begun,’ he wrote to Bernadotte on 4 July, ‘it is my firm resolution to make it last for years, even if I have to fight on the Volga.’ In the interim, he was hoping to make a stand at Drissa.
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Major Clausewitz was sent to Drissa to inspect the camp and report back on its state of readiness, but as he spoke no Russian and the only
piece of paper he had with him was an order signed by Phüll written in French, he was arrested as a spy when he got there.
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When he did extricate himself and report back to Alexander, he minced his words out of consideration for his friend Phüll, but clearly gave Alexander to understand that the camp was of no military value. His assessment was backed up by others present, but it did not bring about a change of plan.

Alexander reached Drissa on 8 July, and Phüll took him on a conducted tour of the fortifications, explaining their finer points. The Tsar’s entourage maintained a stony silence and averted their eyes whenever he looked round for confirmation of Phüll’s assertions. Finally, it was Colonel Alexandre Michaud, a capable officer formerly in the Sardinian service, who summoned up the courage to declare out loud that the camp was of no military value. One Russian general claimed he saw Alexander start to weep with despair, but he quickly recovered himself.
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The First Army trudged into Drissa on 11 July. Alexander issued a resounding proclamation to the troops promising action and a victory of the magnitude of Poltava. This cheered everyone, as the troops could not understand why they had been forced into a two-week retreat before they had been given a chance to fight. But the following day Alexander caved in to reason and decided to abandon the Drissa camp and fall back on Vitebsk, a more suitable position in which to give battle.