recollect it was through a dispatch from Napoleon to the Empress Maria Louisa, intercepted near Châlons by the Cossacks, that the allies were informed of the plan he had formed of falling upon their communications with his whole disposable force, basing his operations upon the fortified towns of Lorraine and Alsace. This highly-important piece of information decided Blücher and Schwarzenberg to effect a junction of their armies, which the plainest principles of strategy had never previously brought to act in concert except at Leipsic and Brienne.
We know, also, that the warning given by Seslawin to General Doctoroff saved him from being crushed at Borovsk by Napoleon, who had just left Moscow in retreat with his whole army. Doctoroff did not at first credit this news,—which so irritated Seslawin that he effected the capture of a French officer and several soldiers of the guard from the French bivouacs and sent them as proofs of its correctness. This warning, which decided the march of Koutousoff to Maloi-Yaroslavitz, prevented Napoleon from taking the way by Kalouga, where he would have found greater facilities for refitting his army and would have escaped the disastrous days of Krasnoi and the Beresina. The catastrophe which befell him would thus have been lessened, though not entirely prevented.
Such examples, rare as they are, give us an excellent idea of what good partisan troops can accomplish when led by good officers.
I will conclude this article with the following summary:—
- A general should neglect no means of gaining information of the enemy's movements, and, for this purpose, should make use of reconnoissances, spies, bodies of light troops commanded by capable officers, signals, and questioning deserters and prisoners.
- By multiplying the means of obtaining information; for, no matter how imperfect and contradictory they may be, the truth may often be sifted from them.