rear
was protected by Mortier, and Heudelet's division, whose troops, newly
arrived, still occupied Insterburg, and kept Tchitchakof in check. On
the 3d of January he effected his junction with Mortier and covered
Koenigsberg.

It was, however, a happy circumstance for Yorck's reputation, that
Macdonald, thus weakened, and whose retreat his defection had
interrupted, was enabled to rejoin the grand army. The inconceivable
slowness of Wittgenstein's march saved that marshal; the Russian
general, however, overtook him at Labiau and Tente; and there, but for
the efforts of Bachelu and his brigade, the valour of the Polish Colonel
Kameski, and Captain Ostrowski, and the Bavarian Major Mayer, the corps
of Macdonald, thus deserted, would have been broken or destroyed; in
that case Yorck would appear to have betrayed him, and history would,
with justice, have stigimatized him with the name of traitor. Six
hundred French, Bavarians, and Poles, remained dead on these two fields
of battle; their blood accuses the Prussians for not having provided, by
an additional article, for the safe retreat of the leader whom they had
deserted.

The King of Prussia disavowed Yorck's conduct. He dismissed him,
appointed Kleist to succeed him in the command, ordered the latter to
arrest his late commander, and send him, as well as Massenbach, to
Berlin, there to undergo their trial. But these generals preserved their
command in spite of him; the Prussian army did not consider their
monarch at liberty; this opinion was founded on the presence of Augereau
and some French troops at Berlin.

Frederick, however, was perfectly aware of the annihilation of our army.
At Smorgoni, Narbonne refused to accept the mission to that monarch,
until Napoleon gave him authority to make the most unreserved
communication. He, Augereau, and several others have declared that
Frederick was not merely restrained by his position in the midst of the
remains of the grand army, and by the dread of Napoleon's re-appearance
at the head of a fresh one, but also by his plighted faith; for every
thing is of a mixed character in the moral as well as the physical
world, and even in the most trifling of our actions there is a variety
of different motives. But, finally, his good faith yielded to necessity,
and his dread to a greater dread. He saw himself, it was said,
threatened with a species of forfeiture by his people and by our
enemies.

It should be remarked that the Pr