The army of Alexander, composed of 300,000 men, kept those provinces in awe. From the banks of the Vistula, from Dresden, from Paris itself, Napoleon had critically surveyed it. He had ascertained that its centre, commanded by Barclay, extended from Wilna and Kowno to Lida and Grodno, resting its right on Vilia, and its left on the Niemen.
That river protected the Russian front by the deviation which it makes from Grodno to Kowno; for it was only in the interval between these two cities, that the Niemen, running toward the north, intersected the line of our attack, and served as a frontier to Lithuania. Before reaching Grodno, and on quitting Kowno, it flows westward.
To the south of Grodno was Bagration, with 65,000 men, in the direction of Wolkowisk; to the north of Kowno, at Rossiana and Keydani, Wittgenstein, with 26,000 men, substituted their bayonets for that natural frontier.
At the same time, another army of 50,000 men, called the reserve, was assembled at Lutsk, in Volhynia, in order to keep that province in check, and observe Schwartzenberg; it was confided to Tormasof, till the treaty about to be signed at Bucharest permitted Tchitchakof, and the greater part of the army in Moldavia, to unite with it.
Alexander, and, under him, his minister of war, Barclay de Tolly, directed all these forces. They were divided into three armies, called, the first western army, under Barclay; the second western army, under Bagration; and the army of reserve, under Tormasof. Two other corps were forming; one at Mozyr, in the environs of Bobruisk; and the other at Riga and Dünabourg. The reserves were at Wilna and Swentziany. In conclusion, a vast entrenched camp was erected before Drissa, within an elbow of the Düna.
The French emperor's opinion was, that this position behind the Niemen was neither offensive nor defensive, and that the Russian army was no better off for the purpose of effecting a retreat; that this army, being so much scattered over a line of sixty leagues, might be surprised and dispersed, as actually happened to it; that, with still more certainty, the left of Barclay, and the entire army of Bagration, being stationed at Lida and at Wolkowisk, in front of the marshes of the Berezina, which they covered, instead of being covered by them, might be thrown back on them and taken; or, at least, that an abrupt and direct attack on Kowno and Wilna would cut them off from their line of operation, indicated by Swentziany and the entrenched camp at Drissa.