Upon arriving at Wilna, Napoleon had the mortification to find, that although the Emperor Alexander had not left the place until two days after he had himself crossed the Niemen, yet the Russian retreat had been made with the utmost regularity; all magazines and provisions, which could yield any advantage to the invaders, having been previously destroyed to a very large amount. While Buonaparte's generals had orders to press forward on their traces, the French Emperor himself remained at Wilna, to conduct some political measures, which seemed of the last importance to the events of the campaign. The Abbé de Pradt had executed with ability the task intrusted to him, of exciting the Poles of the grand duchy of Warsaw, with the hope of a general restoration of Polish freedom. This brave but unhappy country, destined, it would seem, to spend its blood in every cause but its own, had, in that portion of it which formerly belonged to Prussia, and now formed the grand duchy of Warsaw, gained but little by its nominal independence. This state had only a population of about five millions of inhabitants, yet maintained for the service of France, rather than for its own, an armed force of 85,000 men. Eighteen regiments of these were embodied with the Emperor's army, and paid by France; but the formation and expense of the rest far exceeded the revenues of the duchy. The last amounted only to forty millions of francs, while the expenses more than doubled that sum. The grand duchy had also suffered its full share of distress from the Continental System of Napoleon. The revenue of Poland depends on the sale of the grain which her fertile soil produces; and that grain, in the years previous to the present, had lain rotting in the warehouses. The misery of the poor was extreme; the opulence of the rich classes had disappeared, and they could not relieve them. The year 1811 had been a year of scarcity here as well as elsewhere; and, as in former years the Poles had grain which they could not send to market, so at present they had neither corn nor means to purchase it. To all these disadvantages must be added, the plunder and misery sustained by the duchy during the march of Buonaparte's numerous forces from the Vistula to the Niemen. Yet so highly toned is the national patriotism of the Poles, that it kindled at the name of independence, notwithstanding the various accumulated circumstances which tended to damp the flame. When, therefore, a diet of the duchy of Warsaw was convened, where the nobles assembled according to ancient form, all were anxious to meet Napoleon's wishes; but an unfortunate hint which the Emperor had thrown out concerning the length of the discourse with which the Diet was to be opened, induced the worthy Count Mathuchewitz, whose duty it was to draw up the peroration, to extend it to fifty pages of very close writing.