deliberately as they
advanced. The capital itself, Wilna, was evacuated two days before they
came in sight of it; and Napoleon took up his quarters there on the 28th
of June. But it was found that all the magazines, which Buonaparte had
counted on seizing, had been burnt before the Russians withdrew, and the
imperial bulletins began already to denounce the "barbarous method" in
which the enemy seemed resolved to conduct his defence.

It was noticed in an early part of this narrative that Napoleon's plan
of warfare could hardly have been carried into execution on a great
scale, unless by permitting the troops to subsist on plunder; and we
have seen through how many campaigns the marauding system was adopted
without producing any serious inconvenience to the French. Buonaparte,
however, had learned from Spain and Portugal how difficult it is for
soldiers to find food in these ways, provided the population around them
be really united in hostility against them. He had further considered
the vast distance at which a war with Russia must needs be carried on,
and the natural poverty of most of the Czar's provinces, and came to the
resolution of departing on this occasion from his old system. In a word,
months before he left Paris, he had given orders for preparing immense
quantities of provisions of all kinds, to be conveyed along with his
gigantic host, and render him independent of the countries which might
form the theatre of his operations. The destruction of the magazines at
Wilna was sufficient indication that the Emperor had judged well in
ordering his commissariat to be placed on an efficient footing; and his
attention was naturally directed to ascertaining, ere he advanced
further, in how much his directions as to this matter had been
fulfilled. He remained twenty days at Wilna--a pause altogether
extraordinary in a Buonapartean campaign, and which can only be
accounted for by his anxiety on this head. The result of his inquiries
was most unsatisfactory. The prodigious extent of the contracts into
which his war-minister had entered was adequate to the occasion; but the
movement of such enormous trains of cattle and waggons as these
contracts provided for must, under any circumstances, have been tedious,
and in some degree uncertain. In this case they were entered into either
by French traders, who, in consequence of Buonaparte's own practice in
preceding campaigns, could have slender experience of the method of
supp