As regards the degree of blame which attaches to Jerome, it is obvious that, but for the ill-advised order to march upon Drissa, Bagration would have been in no danger. He left Volkovisk on June 28th; Jerome did not even reach Grodno until the 30th. The vile Polish roads, rendered worse by the rain, made marching extremely difficult. A rest may well have been necessary for the over-worked and ill-fed troops; and Jerome was obliged to wait until Reynier had been relieved by the slowly advancing Austrians. Owing to the orders which he had received from head-quarters, Bagration all but marched into the midst of the forces manoeuvring to intercept him. It is clear that, had Jerome moved eastward from Grodno at once, he would have pressed his antagonist hard. On the other hand, he had to take into account the harassed state of his troops, their lack of adequate supplies, the miserable roads, the absence of Reynier, the slowness of Schwarzenberg, and last, not least, the hidden Russian army of Tormazov, which might prove very formidable. Napoleon in his place would probably have taken the risk of an advance of Tormazov on Warsaw. Jerome did not, and, indeed, seeing his position as a subordinate, could not, do so. It is possible that he did not act with all the vigour which circumstances demanded; but in that case the blame must be laid at the door of Napoleon for appointing to a vitally important command a man who lacked the necessary qualifications for it. Napoleon also was directing manoeuvres on the basis of hypotheses which might, and in fact did, prove unfounded. He appears rather to have ignored geographical and climatic conditions; he was certainly ill-informed as to distances. Finally he was committing the same error which had already cost him dear in Spain, in endeavouring to direct complicated strategic manoeuvres from a distance; and the optimism which was becoming a mental disease with him badly affected his calculations.