But a greater difficulty than those we have enumerated soon presented itself. The Russian army, like a will-o’-the-wisp, enticed the French further and further from their base by a series of retreats which made it impossible for Napoleon to fall on the enemy with the fierce rapidity characteristic of his method of warfare. Alexander was playing a waiting game. When the ranks of the enemy were thinned by death, sickness, and desertion, when want and privation stalked hand in hand with the French armies as they painfully made their way along the snow-covered ruts--then would be the time to strike. The Czar could afford to wait, his antagonist could not; one was on the defensive, the other on the offensive, and many hundreds of miles from the capital of his unwieldy Empire. There was little or no opportunity for the soldiers to pay unwelcome attentions to the inhabitants of the villages through which they passed. The peasants had forsaken their wretched wooden shanties, the furniture of the houses of many of the nobles had been removed, making the places almost as cheerless as the frowning forests where their former owners had sought refuge. At Vilna, which the Russians had evacuated, Napoleon experienced none of these troubles. The Poles, longing to restore the independence of their beloved country, regarded him as their potential liberator, delivering to him the keys of the town, donning their national costumes, and indulging in merry-making. The ancient capital of Lithuania awoke from her long sleep. Deputation after deputation waited on the Emperor, hungering to hear the words which would give them back their lost freedom. They were never uttered; he dare not break faith with his allies at this juncture. He made vague promises in order to stimulate their enthusiasm, set up a provisional government, and began to reorganise the provinces with his usual insight, but further than this he would not go. The Poles repaid him well by immediately ordering some 12,000 men to be placed at the Emperor’s disposal, and from first to last they furnished no fewer than 85,000 troops. To the Diet (Parliament) of Warsaw he admitted that he could sanction no movement which might endanger the peaceable possession of Austria’s Polish provinces, but he issued a fiery proclamation to those who were serving with the Russian colours. It runs: