They were supported by Czar Alexander I and the bulk of the officer corps. The "foreign" faction around Barclay de Tolly, composed mostly of officers of German extraction, advocated the continuation of the present policy of delay and withdrawal to dilute Napoleon's striking power. Under strong pressure from above and below, including threats of force, Barclay agreed to an offensive on 6 August. Ignorant as to French dispositions, Barclay intended to outflank what he presumed to be the isolated corps of Viceroy Eugène de Beauharnais near Rudnia, destroy it, and inflict further losses on the French as they came to Eugéne's aid. Barclay advanced on Rudnia and Poryeche on 7 August. Count Matvei Platov's Cossacks imposed a sharp defeat on General Horace Sébastiani's cavalry near Inkovo the same day, inflicting 600 French casualties. On 8 August, Barclay received false intelligence that Eugène's corps was at Poryeche and reoriented half of his army to face north. Platov was directed to rejoin Barclay's army and Bagration was to move to Vidra. Bagration disobeyed his orders, fearing French Marshal Louis-Nicolas Davout's threat to his left flank. He declared his army was hungry and sick and moved to Smolensk. Barclay failed to stop him, merely adjusting his own forces to compensate. On 11 August, Barclay stayed put and engaged only in outpost fighting with French cavalry under Neapolitan King Joachim. On 12 August, Barclay's scouts found Poryeche empty and he directed Platov to reconnoiter the French movements. The Russian offensive had failed due to disagreements among the generals, Barclay's inactivity and pointless marches that lost the Russians time they could not recover. French plan Napoleon had expected a Russian offensive and saw in it a great opportunity to envelop and annihilate the Russian army. He directed Marshal Jacques MacDonald to cross the Daugava to help out Oudinot's force and ordered Oudinot and Saint-Cyr to attack Prince Peter Wittgenstein's 20,000-strong corps to prevent it from assisting Barclay. Napoleon came up with what became known as the Smolensk maneuver, a masterful operation designed to outflank Barclay from the south, cut off the Russians from Moscow and destroy the isolated Russian army, thus bringing the war to an end. The action at Inkovo on 7 August was seen by Napoleon as heralding an immediate Russian attack. Worried, he deployed his army in a defensive posture around III Corps. By 10 August, Barclay's glacial slowness of operations had