Page:Notes upon Russia (volume 1, 1851).djvu/217

Rh Vasiley, elated with this victory, ordered his army to proceed directly into Lithuania, but he himself remained in Smolensko. After some of the more neighbouring fortresses and towns had been received in surrender, then first did Sigismund, king of Poland, levy an army and send but too tardy assistance to those who were besieged in Smolensko. Afterwards, when Smolensko was taken, and when he saw that the Russian army was directing its march towards Lithuania, he himself fled to Borisov, which is situated near the river Beresina, and sent on his army thence under the command of Constantine Ostroski. When the latter reached the Dnieper, near the town of Orsa [Orcha], which is twenty-three German miles distant from Smolensko, he found that the Russian army, which was about eighty thousand strong, was not far from him. The Lithuanians, on the other hand, had not more than thirty-five thousand men, with the addition, nevertheless, of a few pieces of artillery. It was on the 8th day of September, 1514, that Constantine, seeing the state of affairs, threw a bridge over the Dnieper, and made his infantry pass over near the town of Orsa. The cavalry passed by a narrow ford under the very walls of Orsa. Presently, when half the army had crossed the Dnieper, Ivan Andryeevich Czeladin, to whom the chief command had been entrusted by the Grand Duke, received an intimation that he ought to attack this part of the army and overwhelm it. But he replied: “If we were to fall upon this part of the army, the other part, to which perhaps yet other forces may be added, will still remain, and thus a greater danger would threaten us: let us wait until the whole army has crossed, for our strength is such that without doubt we shall be able with but little exertion either to overwhelm this army, or to surround them and drive them like cattle to Moscow, and then it will only remain for us to take possession of the whole of Lithuania.”

Meanwhile the Lithuanian army advanced, mixed with