, there was very soon a mutual understanding.
A moveable armistice, which was approved by Murat, was immediately
concluded. The Russian general and Schwartzenberg were to manoeuvre on
each other, the Russian on the offensive, and the Austrian on the
defensive, but without coming to blows.

Regnier's corps, now reduced to ten thousand men, was not included in
the arrangement; but Schwartzenberg, while he yielded to circumstances,
persevered in his loyalty. He regularly gave an account of every thing
to the commander of the army; he covered the whole front of the French
line with his Austrian troops, and preserved it. This prince was not at
all complaisant towards the enemy; he believed him not upon his bare
word; at every position he was about to yield, he would actually satisfy
himself with his own eyes, that he only yielded it to a superior force,
ready to combat him. In this manner he arrived upon the Bug and the
Narew, from Nur to Ostrolenka, where the war terminated.

He was in this manner covering Warsaw, when, on the 22d of January, he
received instructions from his government to abandon the Grand-duchy, to
separate his retreat from that of Regnier, and to re-enter Gallicia. To
these instructions he only yielded a tardy obedience; he resisted the
pressing solicitations and threatening manoeuvres of Miloradowitch
until the 25th of January; even then, he effected his retreat upon
Warsaw so slowly, that the hospitals and a great part of the magazines
were enabled to be evacuated. Finally, he obtained a more favourable
capitulation for the Warsavians than they could venture to expect. He
did more; although that city was to have been delivered up on the 5th,
he only yielded it on the 8th, and thus gave Regnier the start of three
days upon the Russians.

Regnier was afterwards, it is true, overtaken and surprised at Kalisch,
but that was in consequence of halting too long to protect the flight of
some Polish depots. In the first disorder occasioned by this unexpected
attack, a Saxon brigade was separated from the French corps, retreated
on Schwartzenberg, and was well received by him; Austria allowed it to
pass through her territory, and restored it to the grand army, when it
was assembled near Dresden.

On the 1st of January, 1813, however, at Koenigsberg, where Murat then
was, the desertion of the Prussians and the intrigues forming by Austria
were not known, when suddenly Macdonald's despatch, and an insurrection