Thus, Dresden proved a barren triumph. The Czar of Russia and the King of Prussia should have been taken prisoners; the allied army should have been annihilated; the war should have ended with a glorious peace for France. How did it happen that the wrecked army escaped, and made havoc with Vandamme at Kulm?
The story goes that the Emperor, pressing eagerly forward in pursuit of the vanquished foe, was suddenly stricken with severe sickness; and instead of being carried on to Pirna, was hurried back to Dresden. The army, left without leadership, slackened in the pursuit; the Allies were left undisturbed; and when they came upon Vandamme, that rash officer, taken front and rear, was overwhelmed by superior numbers.
As to the cause of Napoleon’s sudden illness, accounts differ widely. General Marbot states that it was “the result of the fatigue caused by five days in the saddle under incessant rain.”
According to the Emperor himself, as reported by Daru to Pasquier, the illness was “nothing but an attack of indigestion caused by a wretched stew seasoned with garlic, which I cannot endure.” But he had at the time believed himself to be poisoned. “And on such trifles,” said he to Daru, “the greatest events hang! The present one is perhaps irreparable.”
Virtually the same explanation of his sudden return to Dresden, and the abandonment of the pursuit, was given by Napoleon at St. Helena.
It is significant that Constant’s Memoirs represent the Emperor as vomiting and having a chill, accompanied by utter exhaustion, upon his return from the battle-field on the evening of the 27th. Overwork, exposure, mental anxiety, the continual strain of mind and body had evidently brought on a collapse. The illness which recalled him back from Pirna may have originated in the same natural causes. The “stew seasoned with garlic,” or the “leg of mutton stuffed with sage” (for each statement occurs), may have been merely the thing which precipitated the breakdown which was already inevitable.
Whatever the cause, the results were decisive. As at Borodino, he lost all control of events, let the campaign drift as it would, and recovered himself when it was too late to repair the mischief.
Dresden was to prove the last imperial victory. When Napoleon, drenched and dripping, his fine beaver aflop on his shoulder, was taken into the arms of the grateful King of Saxony, on the return from the battle-field of Dresden, he was receiving the last congratulation which he as Emperor would ever hear from subject monarch. To this limit had already shrunk the fortunes of the conqueror who, a few months back, had summoned Talma from Paris to play “to a parquet of kings.”
A stray dog wandering about the battle-field of Dresden, with a collar on its neck, attracted some curiosity, and it was soon known in the French army that the collar bore the inscription, “I belong to General Moreau.” It was soon known, likewise, that this misguided soldier had been mortally wounded early in the action, and had died amidst the enemies of his country.
Napoleon believed that he himself had directed the fatal shot; but one who was in Moreau’s party at the time contended that the ball came from a different battery.