At once he changed his plan and at 1 a.m. sent off four despatches ordering his Guards and all available troops to succour St. Cyr. Vandamme's corps alone was now charged with the task of creeping round the enemy's rear, while the Guards long before dawn resumed their march through the rain and mud. The Emperor followed and passed them at a gallop, reaching the capital at 9 a.m. with Latour-Maubourg's cuirassiers; and, early in the afternoon, the bearskins of the Guards were seen on the heights east of Dresden, while the dark [pg.343] masses of the allies were gathering on the south and west for their reconnaissance in force.
BATTLE OF DRESDEN
Lowering clouds and pitiless rain robbed the scene of all brilliance, but wreathed it with a certain sombre majesty. On the one side was the fair city, the centre of German art and culture, hastily girdled with redoubts and intrenchments manned now by some 120,000 defenders. Fears and murmurings had vanished as soon as the Emperor appeared; and though in many homes men still longed for the triumph of the allies, yet loyalty to their King and awe of Napoleon held the great mass of the citizens true to his alliance. As for the French soldiery, their enthusiasm was unbounded. As regiment after regiment tramped in wearily from the east over the Elbe bridge and the men saw that well-known figure in the gray overcoat, fatigues and discomforts were forgotten; thunderous shouts of "Vive l'Empereur" rent the air and rolled along the stream, carrying inspiration to the defenders, doubt and dismay to the hostile lines. Yet these too were being strengthened, until they finally[pg.344] mustered close on 200,000 men, who crowned the slopes south of Dresden with a war-cloud that promised to sweep away its hasty defences—had not Napoleon been there.
The news of his arrival shook the nerves of the Russian Emperor, and it was reserved for the usually diffident King of Prussia to combat all notion of retreat. Schwarzenberg's reconnaissance in force therefore took place punctually at four o'clock, when the French, after a brief rest, were well prepared to meet them. The Prussians had already seized the "Great Garden" which lines the Pirna road; and from this point of vantage they now sought to drive St. Cyr from the works thrown up on its flank and rear. But their masses were torn by a deadly fire and finally fell back shattered. The Russians, on their right, fared no better. At the allied centre and left, the attack at one time promised success. Under cover of a heavy cannonade from their slopes, the Austrians carried two redoubts: but, with a desperate charge, the Old Guard drove in through the gorges of these works and bayoneted the victors of an hour. As night fell, the assailants drew off baffled, after sustaining serious losses.
Nevertheless, the miseries of the night, the heavy rains of the dawning day and the knowledge of the strength of the enemy's position in front and of Vandamme's movement in their rear, failed to daunt their spirits. If they were determined, Napoleon was radiant with hope. His force, though smaller, held the inner line and spread over some three miles; while the concave front of the allies extended over double that space, and their left wing was separated from the centre by the stream and defile of Plauen. From his inner position he could therefore readily throw an overpowering mass on any part of their attenuated array. He prepared to do so against their wings. At those points everything promised success to his methods of attack.
Never, perhaps, in all modern warfare has the musket been so useless as amidst the drenching rains which beat[pg.345] upon the fighters at the Katzbach and before Dresden. So defective was its firing arrangement then that after a heavy storm only a feeble sputter came from whole battalions of foot: and on those two eventful days the honours lay with the artillery and l'arme blanche. As for the infantrymen, they could effect little except in some wild snatches of bayonet work at close quarters. This explains the course of events both at the Katzbach on the 26th, and at Dresden on the following day. The allied centre was too strongly posted on the slopes south of Dresden to be assailed with much hope of success. But, against the Russian vanguard on the allied right, Napoleon launched Mortier's corps and Nansouty's cavalry with complete success, until Wittgenstein's masses on the heights stayed the French onset. Along the centre, some thousand cannon thundered against one another, but with no very noteworthy result, save that Moreau had his legs carried away by a shot from a field battery that suddenly opened upon the Czar's suite. It was the first shot that dealt him this fatal wound, but several other balls fell among the group until Alexander and his staff moved away.
Meanwhile the great blow was struck by Napoleon at the allied left. There the Austrian wing was sundered from the main force by the difficult defile of Plauen; and it was crushed by one of the Emperor's most brilliant combinations. Directing Victor with 20,000 men of all arms to engage the white-coats in front, he bade Murat, with 10,000 horsemen, steal round near the bank of the Elbe and charge their flank and rear. The division of Count Metzko bore the brunt of this terrible onset. Nobly it resisted. Though not one musket in fifty would fire, the footmen in one place beat off two charges of Latour-Maubourg's cuirassiers, until he headed his line with lancers, who mangled their ranks and opened a way for the sword.[[359]] Then all was slaughter;[pg.346] and as Murat's squadrons raged along their broken lines, 10,000 footmen, cut off from the main body, laid down their arms. News of this disaster on the left and the sound of Vandamme's cannon thundering among the hills west of Pirna decided the allied sovereigns and Schwarzenberg to prepare for a timely retreat into Bohemia. Yet so bold a front did they keep at the centre and right that the waning light showed the combatants facing each other there on even terms.
During the night, the rumbling of wagons warned Marmont's scouts that the enemy were retreating;[[360]] and the Emperor, coming up at break of day, ordered that Marshal and St. Cyr to press directly on their rear, while Murat pursued the fugitives along the Freiburg road further to the west. The outcome of these two days of fighting was most serious for the allies. They lost 35,000 men in killed, wounded and prisoners—a natural result of their neglect to seize Fortune's bounteous favours on the 25th; a result, too, of Napoleon's rapid movements and unerring sagacity in profiting by the tactical blunders of his foes.
It was the last of his great victories. And even here the golden fruit which he hoped to cull crumbled to bitter dust in his grasp. As has been pointed out, he had charged General Vandamme, one of the sternest fighters in the French army, to undertake with 38,000 men a task which he himself had previously hoped to achieve with more than double that number. This was to seize Pirna and the plateau to the west, which commands the three roads leading towards Teplitz in Bohemia. The best of these roads crosses the Erzgebirge by way of Nollendorf and the gorge leading down to Kulm, the other by the Zinnwald pass, while between them is a third and yet more difficult track. Vandamme[pg.347] was to take up a position west or south-west of Pirna so as to cut off the retreat of the foe.