The commander of the Russian First Army, General Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly, was himself aiming to fight and thus massed the bulk of his forces at Vitebsk, even though he was aware that his chances to win against Napoleon were not good.

[2] The fighting on 26 July had General Konovnitsyn's rearguard division taking on elements of the French IV Corps and ended with the Russians managing to delay the enemy for the entire day, allowing the bulk of the army to mass at Vitebsk.

[4] Following the engagement at Ostrovno, Ostermann-Tolstoy's IV Corps retreated 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) towards Kakuviachino, where they were relieved by the 3rd Infantry Division under General Petr Konovnitsyn, who took up the rearguard responsibilities.

Meshikov brought alarming news of the defeat of Bagration's Second Army at the battle of Saltanovka, three days earlier, at the hands of Marshal Louis Nicolas Davout.

[5] The Russians thus needed to abandon any plans to give battle, urgently break contact with the pursuing enemy and move southeast, in an attempt to draw closer to Bagration's force.

Napoleon was unaware that the bulk of the Russian force was already making arrangements for an immediate retreat and that they had pushed forward only a rearguard, under General Peter Graf von der Pahlen, with orders to fight a delaying action and thus allow the army to slip away unmolested.

The battlefield at Vitebsk was a vast and flat plain and only the river Dvina separated the French forces from the Russians, who were occupying a slightly elevated position on the eastern bank.

Napoleon only had two infantry divisions (13th and 14th) from Viceroy Eugène's "Army of Italy" (also called IVth Corps), under his immediate command and was aware that the enemy possessed superior numbers of some 90,000 men.

[6] Three hundred voltigeurs from the 9th Line regiment, which had been sent forward to skirmish were caught in an awkward position by superior Russian forces, but the French valiantly held their ground against all odds.

The French lost Colonel Liédot, a distinguished officer, commander of the general staff of the army's military engineer corps, who was killed in action.

Indeed, Napoleon took for granted the fact that the Russians would fight the next day and stopped his attack early on, unwilling to risk high losses against an enemy who vastly outnumbered the forces that he had available.