Found an interesting memoir:
<Recollections of Russia During Thirty-three Years' Residence by a German Nobleman> by Eduard Kolbe.

The author travelled from Königsberg to Livonia, St. Petersburg, and Moscow, en route meeting local nobles of German descent like count Pahlen.
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At first, he is baffled by the "immensity" of Russia compared to the narrowly clustered towns in his home country. Kolbe swears having travelled 200 miles without finding a single trace of human settlement before reaching Mitau, his first destination.
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Thus ended the bloodiest day of the Napoleonic Wars before the Battle of Leipzig.

Personal recollections in the aftermath of the battle, between the night of the 7th to #OTD the 8th of September, 1812... 🧵

Picture: Borodino, sketch by Christian Faber du Faur

(1/37) 1. Napoleon has no doubts that Kutuzov offered him the battle he has long desired, and that it is his soldiers who stood their ground until the last minute. But having "yield[ed] neither prisoners nor trophies," the victory looks ominously fruitless-yet again!
(2/37)

#OTD 10 June 1754, Washington received Dinwiddie's letter promoting him to the commander of the 1st Virginia Regiment. In return, he made a grandiose promise to rally the Six Nations against the French, but also complained about the lack of unity among the officers.
(1/18) As Innes succeeded Fry as the new commander-in-chief, Washington and other officers were promoted along with him. Seizing this opportunity, Washington recommended William Peyrouney, who had served as Ensign in the regiment for twelve years, as the new adjutant,
(2/18)

#OTD 8 June 1754, before leaving for the Albany Council, Postmasters General Benjamin Franklin wrote "Short Hints towards a Scheme for Uniting the Northern Colonies"-his vision of a parliamentary union of the northern provinces for collective defense of the frontier.
(1/22) Franklin first broached the idea in 1751, amidst the escalating Anglo-French dispute over the Forks of the Ohio River or, La Belle Riviere. The neglect of those fertile tracts of land in the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) had only rekindled the decades-old animosity.
(2/22)

#OTD #Onthisday 28 May, 1754, Major Washington of the Virginia Regiment fought his first battle at Jumonville Glen, which ended in the murder of Ensign Jumonville. In Voltaire's words, it was a "torch lighted in the forests of America" that "set all Europe in conflagration.”
1/🧵 At 10 p.m. on the 27th, Washington set out from his camp in the Great Meadows, Pennsylvania with a party of about 40 Virginia militiamen. They had no idea where they were headed for, and what catastrophic liability their would come to bear.
(Wa. to Dinwiddie, 29 May 1755)
(2/46)

#OTD #Onthisday 27 May, 1754, Christopher Gist and the Half-King confirmed that the French were advancing from the Crossing of Youghiogany.
Washington, overflowing with confidence that he had prepared "a charming field for encounter," set off for the French camp.
(1/9) Yesterday, "a small light partys of Horse (wagon Horses)to reconnoitre the Enemy, and discover [the enemy's] strength and motion" had returned "without seeing anything."
But early in the morning of the 27th, Gist returned to the camp with a frightening intelligence.
(2/9)

#OTD #Onthisday 26 May, 1754, Lieutenant-Colonel George Washington receives a letter from Colonel William Fairfax sent by Colonel Joshua Fry, that Governor Robert Dinwiddie has arrived at Winchester, and was "desirous to see the Half King," a Seneca leader.
(1/4) Three days ago, Tanaghrisson or the Half-King, whose childhood spent in French captivity sustained his aversion to the French expansion into the Forks of the Ohio, had offered to guide Washington and his 'English brethren' to the French encampment in the Great Meadows.
(2/4)

On 1 May, 1813, Wintzingerode delayed the French advance on Lützen at the Battle of Poserna, during which Napoleon witnessed the death of Bessières. Thanks to this, Diebitsch issued a plan of action for the Allied army to cross the Elster at dawn and offer a battle at Lützen. Between one and two o'clock in the morning, Napoleon prepared to transfer the bulk of his army to Lützen via Merseburg. By five, the Divisions Durutte and Bonet would leave Weißenfels for Eugene's headquarter in Merseburg, where the former would join Eugene and the latter

#OTD 30 April, 1813, Frimont withdrew the Austrian auxiliary to the right bank of the Vistula, allowing Sacken's entry.
To Metternich, Lebzeltern reported the escalating tensions between the Allies and the Saxons over the levies demanded by the Committee in Dresden. Langenau, arriving from Dresden, was the first to inform Poniatowski that the new relations between Austria and Russia has become irreversible, and that he must comply with the procedure of evacuation stipulated by the convention terminating the armistice.
(Senfft)

#OTD 30 April, 1813, the Allied army began to arrive at the Elster, but the fords of Halle and Merseburg were again lost to Lauriston and Macdonald.
Napoleon reached Weissenfels, confident that every ford was in his hands-until he realized that Eugene had almost no cavalry left. Around midnight in Köthen, Bülow received the fifth dispatch from Yorck in Skeuditz, that Merseburg had already fallen to Macdonald. At dawn, the same dispatch reached Kleist in Halle. On the previous day, both of them had planned for an expedition to Merseburg;

#OTD 29 April, 1813, Alexander and Frederick William moved their headquarters from Dresden to Grimma.
To eliminate their lingering doubts about Austria's commitment, Metternich instructed Lebzeltern to disclose Count Stadion's project to assemble the Austrian army. In the morning, Senfft returned to Frederick Augustus in Prague. In contrast to the resurgence of suspicion towards him among the Allies in Dresden, the citizens greeted him with "the greatest solemnity and a lively eagerness."
(Senfft)

#OTD 29 April, 1813, Napoleon reached Naumburg and united with a part of Ney's corps.
Learning of the skirmish between Lauriston and Kleist in Halle, he ordered Eugene to focus on Merseburg instead. Macdonald's capture of the town compelled Kleist to evacuate Halle as intended. At Wittgenstein's order, Yorck, Bülow, and Kleist consolidated their forces around Halle, where cannonade had raged on from noon to 4 p.m. on the previous day. Yorck moved from Landsberg to Schkeuditz, about 15 miles southeast of Halle,

#OTD 28 April, 1813, Napoleon discovered Wittgenstein's maneuver on Leipzig. He set out to build a seamless line of communication between all the fords on the left bank of the Saale, from Jena to Halle.
On his way to Eckartsberga, he stopped for a visit to the Duchess of Weimar. "I think that [their] first goal will be to arrive at Leipzig," he wrote to Ney, headquartered in Naumburg, at 3 a.m. The hypothesis was based on two events: the surrender of Thorn, "reduced to 900 Bavarians by illness," and Sacken's march on Cracow.

At 9:35 p.m. #Onthisday #OTD 28 April, 1813, the 68-year-old Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov died of cold at Bunzlau, where he purportedly had reconciled with the Tsar. His death unleashed Wittgenstein, his successor who received the official letter of appointment on the same day. The permanent friction between Alexander and Kutuzov, dating back to the ill-fated descent from the Pratzen Heights in 1805, waned on his final days. He was still adamantly opposed to Wittgenstein and Blucher's plan for an offensive, but no longer had any energy left to quarrel.

#OTD 27 April, 1813, Napoleon ordered Ney to focus entirely on the left bank of the Saale. But Wittgenstein, just appointed the commander-in-chief of the Allied army, began spreading out his forces between both banks, while he himself continued to advance on Leipzig. A day ago, Bülow received a confounding dispatch from Wittgenstein. Dated the 26th, it obliged him to operate independently between the Roßlau, the Upper Elbe, and the Lower Saale to "watch the movements of the Viceroy and simultaneously cover the siege of Wittenberg."

#OTD 27 April, 1813, Thielmann hosted a banquet in celebration of his birthday and the incipient war of liberation from the French. The occasion, however, ended in a violent altercation with Brigadier General Sahr, who opposed the latter cause as too dangerous. Early in the morning, Sahr entered the headquarter of Thielmann and wished him a happy birthday. But he did not stop there, and frankly advised him "that he should not use today 's festival to influence the officers in a way that does not agree with the king 's orders."

#OTD 26 April, 1813, Napoleon began to move his army of 120,000 men towards the Saale, aiming to unite with Eugene's corps and cover all of the left bank.
Running out of time, Wittgenstein ordered a general advance on Leipzig, with the expectation of a pitched battle at Lützen. An order of the day was issued to Berthier, Ney, Jerome, and Eugene.
At 7 a.m. and 1 p.m., he assigned the two days' marching route for Marmont's VI Corps and the Imperial Guard, which the Chief of Staff would compile into a more coherent format.

At 11 p.m. #Onthisday #OTD 25 April, 1813, Napoleon and Caulaincourt reached Erfurt at breakneck speed. While waiting for each corps reach the Saale in succession, he sought to streamline the requisitioning of supplies. "The speed at which we journeyed was inconceivable," wrote Caulaincourt, "...There, as everywhere, the presence of the Emperor operated like a talisman in tranquillizing the public mind. During the whole of our journey through this conquered country,

A thread on the army order #Onthisday #OTD 25 April, 1813:
While Napoleon's carriages were on a race to Erfurt, Stewart arrived in Dresden. After consulting Hardenberg, he claimed to have seen "a grand military combination" about to unravel.
But to what extent was this true?🧵 At 8 a.m., on the day after "an event most propitious," Stewart and Jackson entered the Saxon capital. After finding their quarters at Hôtel de Pologne, the former went to find the two sovereigns while the latter "went almost directly to Lord Cathcart."
(Jackson)

Again, I've been writing nonstop for four months. Sad to announce that I will be leaving the 1813 journey after Lützen to focus on compiling my chronicle of 1812 into a book, and hopefully come back after a year. The chronicle of 1813, unlike 1812, has required me to extensively study sources in foreign languages. And thanks to the couriers up and running daily in this war zone, the amount of correspondences is incomparable to that during the Russian campaign.

#OTD 24 April, 1813, the belligerents on the Elbe drifted away from each other. Against Napoleon's caution, Eugene recrossed the Saale and returned to Aschersleben on the left bank. Wittgenstein, crossing the Roslau, left Dessau to concentrate his forces on the right bank. In the morning, Eugene returned from his expedition to the right bank of the Saale, during which he went as far as Köthen. Apart from a small engagement with few hundreds of Cossacks and Prussians, during which three men from each side were killed, there was no enemy in sight.