This incredibly small number marched to the combat against a Russian force of at least 200,000 men and 300 cannon. In fact, by the reports of field marshal Diebitsch, found after his retreat, and the detailed statements confidently made in the Berlin Gazette, the Russian forces amounted to 300,000; but we reject one third on the supposition that the regiments had not been entirely completed. If the very thought of commencing a war with such disproportionate means, against so overwhelming a force, should seem to the reader to be little better than madness, he will appreciate the energy and courage with which it was supported, when he learns that in _twenty days_, from the 10th of February to the 2d of March, _thirteen_ sanguinary battles were fought with the enemy, besides twice that number of small skirmishes, in which, as we shall see, that enemy was uniformly defeated, and a full third part of his forces annihilated. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 29: The dictatorship may be said to have been the first of our misfortunes. The Dictator, acting in contradiction to the spirit of the revolution, did not take advantage of that enthusiasm with which the revolution commenced and by which prodigies might have been achieved. But not only did he neglect to make use of that enthusiasm, or to foster it, he even took measures which had a tendency to repress it. The first fault with which he was reproached by the Patriotic Club, was his having given permission to the Grand Duke to leave the kingdom with his corps, taking with them their arms and accoutrements, which were really Polish property. The retaining of the Grand Duke would have been of the greatest importance to us. No historian could have blamed such an act; for if the justice of our revolution be once acknowledged, every energetic and decisive act which would favor its happy result must also be justified in the view of history. The Russians indeed have regarded our conduct on this point as an indication of weakness and timidity rather than as an act of delicacy and magnanimity, in which light Chlopicki intended that it should be considered. That same corps, attached to the Grand Duke, consisting, as we have said, of 7,000 men and 24 cannon, with the Grand Duke himself, did not regard it in this light, for they fought against us in the very first battle. Another fault of general Chlopicki was, not to have taken immediately the offensive, passed the Bug, and entered the brother provinces which had been incorporated with Russia. The Russian troops, especially those in Lithuania, were not in a state to resist the first impetuosity of our national forces. The Russian soldiers, as the reader probably knows, are not, except in the large cities, concentrated in barracks, as in other states of Europe, but are dispersed in quarters throughout the country, in small bodies; so that sometimes a single regiment may be spread to a circumference which may embrace eighty to a hundred