Of the Russian army as a whole it is to be said that there were too many generals entitled by their rank to high command, and whom it was deemed necessary to placate by giving them commands. At Borodino, besides the general officers on the staffs of Barclay and Bagration, Bennigsen was present as Chief-of-Staff of all the Russian armies; Konovnitzin was “general of service,” and there were others. Miloradovich commanded two army corps under Barclay, and General Gorchakov was also on the field in a somewhat undefined capacity--all these in addition to the Commander-in-Chief and the leaders of the two armies. Most of them were useless on the field, for Barclay, Bagration, and Kutuzov naturally sent orders direct to the corps and divisional commanders. In 1813 matters were even worse. In order to employ as many as possible of the ambitious general officers a practice was adopted of combining corps in pairs. In this fashion a force of about 35,000 men was burdened with more than thirty generals and three distinct staffs! In 1812 the confusion at head-quarters, owing to the presence of unattached generals or relatives of the Tzar, was often great, and that disaster did not ensue was more than once due to something like sheer good fortune. Alexander also committed what might have been a fatal error in not giving one general precedence over another when acting together. Barclay and Bagration often found it hard to agree; and though Chichagov and Tormazov, and, apparently, Wittgenstein and Steingell, succeeded in working together, it was fortunate that trouble did not arise. CHAPTER IV THE FIRST STAGE OF THE CAMPAIGN. OPERATIONS FROM KOVNO TO VITEBSK The Russian frontier in 1812, from the Black Sea to where the River Bug issues from Galicia, was practically as it is to-day. The ten Polish Governments, however, then formed the greater part of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw: the border therefore stopped short at the Bug and the lower Niemen below Grodno. The Niemen, rising near the city of Minsk, flows roughly westward for about 150 miles to Grodno, thence about 80 miles northward to Kovno, and then some 110 miles westward into the Kurisches Haff. From Grodno to Kovno the channel is deeply sunk and difficult to cross. There were in 1812 bridges at Grodno and Tilsit; but at Kovno the Königsberg-Vilna high-road was served only by a ferry. For the last 60 miles of its course the Niemen is in Prussian territory. It thus became extremely important for Napoleon as soon as he had occupied its right bank. He had already collected a large flotilla of gunboats and barges, under Rear-Admiral Baste, in the ports of the Frisches and Kurisches Haffs, and was able therefore to bring immense quantities of supplies from his advanced depôts to Kovno and thence to Vilna.