The Prussians suffered heavily from the French artillery, but without giving way. The Swedes and Russians at length came up, and the line of Ney began to yield ground. That general, who had hardly, though all his forces were engaged, made his post good against the Russians alone, despaired of success when he saw these new enemies appear. He began to retreat; and his first movement in that direction was a signal of flight to the 7th corps, composed chiefly of Saxons not over well inclined to the cause of Napoleon, and who therefore made it no point of honour to fight to the death in his cause. A huge blank was created in the French line by their flight; and the cavalry of the allies rushing in at the gap, the army of Ney was cut into two parts; one of which pushed forwards to Dahme with the maréchal himself; the other, with Oudinot, retreated upon Scharnitz. Ney afterwards accomplished his retreat on Torgau. But the battle of Dennewitz had cost him 10,000 men, forty-three pieces of cannon, and abundance of warlike trophies, relinquished to the adversary, besides the total disappointment of his object in marching towards Berlin.[282]
These repeated defeats, of Gross-Beeren, Katzbach, and Dennewitz, seemed to intimate that the French were no longer the invincibles they had once been esteemed; or at least, that when they yet worked miracles, it was only when Buonaparte was at their head. Others saw the matter in a different point of view. They said that formerly, when means were plenty with Buonaparte, he took care that his lieutenants were supplied with forces adequate to the purposes on which they were to be employed. But it was surmised that now he kept the guard and the élite of his forces under his own immediate command, and expected his lieutenants to be as successful with few and raw troops as they had formerly been with numbers, and veterans. It cannot, however, be said that he saved his own exertions; for during the month of September, while he persisted in maintaining the war in Saxony, although no affair of consequence took place, yet a series of active measures showed how anxious he was to bring the war to a decision under his own eye.[283]
In perusing the brief abstract of movements which follows, the reader will remember, that it was the purpose of Buonaparte to bring the allies to a battle on some point, where, by superior numbers or superior skill, he might obtain a distinguished victory; while, on the other hand, it was the policy of the allies, dreading at once his talents and his despair, to avoid a general action; to lay waste the ground around the points he occupied; restrict his communications; raise Germany in arms around him; and finally, to encompass and hem him in when his ranks were grown thin, and the spirit of his soldiers diminished. Keeping these objects in his eye, the reader, with a single glance at the map, will conceive the meaning of the following movements on either side.
Having deputed to Ney, as we have just seen, the task of checking the progress of the Crown Prince, and taking Berlin if possible, Buonaparte started in person from Dresden on the 3d September, in hopes of fetching a blow at Blucher, whose Cossacks, since the battle of the Katzbach, had advanced eastward, and intercepted a convoy even near Bautzen. But agreeably to the plan adopted at the general headquarters of the allies, the Prussian veteran fell back and avoided a battle. Meanwhile, Napoleon was recalled towards Dresden by the news of the defeat of Ney at Dennewitz, and the yet more pressing intelligence that the allies were on the point of descending into Saxony, and again arraying themselves under the walls of Dresden. The advanced guard of Witgenstein had shown itself, it was said, at Pirna, and the city was a prey to new alarms. The French Emperor posted back towards the Elbe, and on the 9th came in sight of Witgenstein. But the allied generals, afraid of one of those sudden strokes of inspiration, when Napoleon seemed almost to dictate terms to fate, had enjoined Witgenstein to retreat in his turn. The passes of the Erzgebirge received him, and Buonaparte, following him as far as Peterswald, gazed on the spot where Vandamme met his unaccountable defeat, and looked across the valley of Culm to Toplitz, where his rival Alexander still held his headquarters. With the glance of an eye, the most expert in military affairs, he saw the danger of involving himself in such impracticable defiles as the valley of Culm, and the roads which communicated with it, and resolved to proceed no farther.
Napoleon, therefore, returned towards Dresden, where he arrived on the 12th September. In his retreat, a trifling skirmish occurred, in which the son of Blucher was wounded, and made prisoner. A victory was claimed on account of this affair, in the bulletin. About the same period, Blucher advanced upon the French troops opposed to him, endangered their communications with Dresden, and compelled them to retreat from Bautzen, and Neustadt, towards Bischoffswerder and Stolpen. While Buonaparte thought of directing himself eastward towards this indefatigable enemy, his attention was of new summoned southward to the Bohemian mountains. Count Lobau, who was placed in observation near Gieshubel, was attacked by a detachment from Schwartzenberg's army. Napoleon hastened to his relief, and made a second attempt to penetrate into these mountain recesses, from which the eagles of the allies made such repeated descents. He penetrated, upon this second occasion, beyond Culm, and as far as Nollendorf, and had a skirmish with the allies, which was rather unfavourable to him. The action was broken off by one of the tremendous storms which distinguished the season, and Buonaparte again retreated towards Gieshubel. On his return to Dresden, he met the unpleasant news, that the Prince-Royal was preparing to cross the Elbe, and that Bulow had opened trenches before Wittenberg; while Blucher, on his side, approached the right bank of the river, and neither Ney nor Macdonald had sufficient force to check their progress.
On the 21st September, Napoleon once again came in person against his veteran enemy, whom he met not far from Hartha; but it was once more in vain. The Prussian field-maréchal was like the phantom knight of the poet. Napoleon, when he advanced to attack him, found no substantial body against which to direct his blows.
The Emperor spent some hours at the miserable thrice-sacked village of Hartha, deliberating, probably, whether he should press on the Crown Prince or Blucher, and disable at least one of these adversaries by a single blow; but was deterred by reflecting, that the time necessary for bringing either of them to action would be employed by Schwartzenberg in accomplishing that purpose of seizing Dresden, which his movements had so frequently indicated.
RETREATS TOWARDS DRESDEN.
Thus Napoleon could neither remain at Dresden, without suffering the Crown Prince and Blucher to enter Saxony, and make themselves masters of the valley of the Elbe, nor make any distant movement against those generals, without endangering the safety of Dresden, and, with it, of his lines of communication with France. The last, as the more irreparable evil, he resolved to guard against, by retreating to Dresden, which he reached on the 24th. His maréchals had orders to approach closer to the central point, where he himself had his headquarters; and all the right side of the Elbe was abandoned to the allies. It is said by Baron Odeleben,[284] that the severest orders were issued for destroying houses, driving off cattle, burning woods, and rooting up fruit-trees, reducing the country in short to a desert (an evil reward for the confidence and fidelity of the old King of Saxony,) but that they were left unexecuted, partly owing to the humanity of Napoleon's lieutenants, and partly to the rapid advance of the allies. There was little occasion for this additional cruelty; for so dreadfully had these provinces been harassed and pillaged by the repeated passing and repassing of troops on both sides, that grain, cattle, and forage of every kind, were exhausted, and they contained scarce any other sustenance for man or beast, except the potato crop, then in the ground.