By 4 P.M. on the 26th the bridges were finished and the passage began, but not without resistance by the Russians, who were grad ually closing in. The crossing continued all night, though inter rupted from time to time by failures of the bridges. All day during the 27th stragglers continued to cross, covered by such combatants as remained under sufficient discipline to be employed. At 8 A.M. on the 28th, however, Tschitschagov and Wittgenstein moved forward on both banks of the river to the attack, but were held off by the splendid self-sacrifice of the few remaining troops under Ney, Oudinot and Victor, until about i P.M. the last body of regular troops passed over the bridges, and only a few thousand stragglers remained beyond the river.
The number of troops engaged by the French that day cannot be given exactly. Oudinot's and Victor's men were relatively fresh and may have totalled 20,000, whilst Ney can hardly have had more than 6,000 of all corps fighting under him. How many were killed can never be known, but three days later the total number of men reported fit for duty had fallen to 8,800 only.
Henceforward the retreat of the army became practically a headlong flight, and on Dec. 8, having reached Smorgoni and seeing that nothing further could be done by him at the front, the emperor handed over the command of what remained to Murat, and left for Paris to organize a fresh army for the following year. Travelling at the fullest speed, he reached the Tuileries on the i8th, of ter a journey of 3 1 2 hours. After the em peror's departure the cold set in with increased severity, the ther mometer falling to 23°. On Dec. 8, Murat reached Vilna, whilst Ney with about 400 men and Wrede with 2,000 Bavarians still formed the rearguard ; but it was quite impossible to carry out Napoleon's instructions to go into winter quarters about the town, so that the retreat was resumed on the loth and ultimately Konigs berg was attained on Dec. 19 by Murat with 400 Guards and 600 Guard cavalry dismounted. Meanwhile on the extreme French right Schwarzenberg and his Austrians had drifted away towards their own frontier, and the Prussian contingent, which under Yorck formed part of Macdonald's command about Riga, had entered into a convention with the Russians at Tauroggen (Dec. 30) which deprived the French of the last support upon their left. Konigsberg thus became untenable, and Murat fell back to Posen, where on Jan. ro he handed over his command to Eugene Beau harnais and returned to Paris. The Russian pursuit practically ceased at the line of the Niemen, for the Russian troops also had suffered terrible hardships and a period of rest had become an absolute necessity.
The Convention of Tauroggen be came the starting-point of Prussia's regeneration. As the news of the destruction of the Grande Armee spread, and the appearance of countless stragglers convinced the Prussian people of the reality of the disaster, the spirit generated by years of French domination burst out. For the moment the king and his ministers were placed
in a position of the greatest anxiety, for they knew the resources of France and the boundless versatility of their arch-enemy far too well to imagine that the end of their sufferings was yet in sight. To disavow the acts and desires of the army and of the secret societies for defence with which all north Germany was honey combed would be to imperil the very existence of the monarchy, whilst an attack on the wreck of the Grande Armee meant the cer tainty of a terrible retribution from the new armies now rapidly forming on the Rhine.
But the Russians and the soldiers were resolved to continue the campaign, and working
they put pressure on the not unwilling representatives of the civil power to facilitate the supply and equipment of such troops as were still in the field; they could not refuse food and shelter to their starving countrymen or their loyal allies, and thus by degrees the French garrisons scattered about the country either found themselves surrounded or were compelled to retire to avoid that fate. Thus it happened that the viceroy of Italy felt himself compelled to depart from the positive injunctions of the emperor to hold on at all costs to his advanced position at Posen, where about 14,000 men had gradually rallied around him, and to withdraw step by step to Magdeburg, where he met reinforcements and commanded the whole course of the lower Elbe.
Meanwhile the emperor in Paris had been organizing a fresh army for the reconquest of Prussia. Thanks to his having compelled his allies to fight his battles for him, he had not as yet drawn very heavily on the fighting re sources of France, the actual percentage of men taken by the con scriptions during the years since 1806 being actually lower than that in force in continental armies of the early twentieth century. He had also created in 1811-12 a new National Guard, organized in "cohorts" to distinguish it from the regular army, and for home defence only, and these by a skilful appeal to their patriotism and judicious pressure applied through the prefects, became a useful reservoir of half-trained men for new battalions of the active army. Levies were also made with rigorous severity in the states of the Rhine Confederation, and even Italy was called on for fresh sacrifices. In this manner by the end of March upwards of 200,000 men were moving towards the Elbe,' and in the first fort night of April they were duly concentrated in the angle formed by the Elbe and Saale, threatening on the one hand Berlin, on the other Dresden and the east.