At the first appearance of Tettenborn's Cossacks, Hamburg rose and drove out the French, remaining in possession of the allies until the end of May; but the trusty French garrisons in Dantzic, Stettin, Küstrin, Glogau, Modlin, and Zamosc, having been reinforced by Eugène, held their respective strongholds, and were left to do so. The absence of these much-needed veterans was the first element of weakness in Napoleon's army. A second was the insufficiency of real cavalry, brave as had been the parade of horses in France. It was the great captain's firm conviction, repeatedly and emphatically expressed, that without active cavalry, armed with long-range guns, offensive warfare was not possible. This defect he had hoped to remedy in the last three weeks before opening the campaign. The third element in a fatal triad was the temper of his generals, which was restless and insubordinate almost from the outset. They were his mightiest men: Berthier as chief of staff; Mortier commanding the guard; Davout, Ney, Bertrand, Lauriston, Marmont, Reynier, Macdonald, and Oudinot, each in readiness with a corps; Victor coming up with another; Augereau preparing to lead the Bavarians, Rapp at Dantzic, Poniatowski in Galicia—twelve corps in all.
The French soldiers formed a great army: two hundred and thirty-five thousand men on paper, actually two hundred thousand, of whom a hundred and thirty-five thousand were mobile and in readiness when the Emperor took command. Eugène had forty-seven thousand more. Consequently when Napoleon, troubled by the exaggerated reports of his enemy being stronger and more forward in preparation than he had believed possible, set out for Saxony three weeks earlier than the day originally fixed by him for the beginning of hostilities, he was already a victim of his own nervous apprehensions. In colder phlegm he would have foreseen the truth. Russia had become apathetic as soon as the seat of war was transferred beyond her borders; strenuous as were the efforts of Prussia, Scharnhorst's means were slender, and he could not work miracles. All told, the allies had at the moment only seventy thousand men ready for the field. Wittgenstein was for the moment commander-in-chief. The monarchs, utterly uncongenial, were struggling to act in harmony, but double weakness is not strength. They had only a single advantage—excellent horses in abundance for both cavalry and artillery. "The worse the troops, the greater the need of artillery"; "great battles are won with artillery"; these were two of Napoleon's aphorisms. The great strategist had lost his reconnoitering arm in Russia and Poland, the artillery specialist must have scorned the antiquated guns which now replaced the splendid field-pieces that rested on the bottom of ponds and rivers whither he had flung them on his disastrous retreat. With his high officers sullen, his ranks untried, his cavalry feeble, his artillery hastily collected from arsenal stores, his staff incomplete, and his prestige waning, the Emperor might well abdicate temporarily and exclaim, as he did, "I shall conduct this war as General Bonaparte." This resolution was sacredly kept.
The premature opening of the campaign was certain to make Austria pivotal in European politics once again. Her preparations were not well advanced, but her strength was growing daily, while that of her rivals was sure to diminish until in the end the coalition would be powerless without her. This Napoleon saw, and he arranged his strategy to checkmate what he now felt to be a hostile neutrality. Believing that the enemy would meet him half way, his first plan showed all the marks of greatness which characterized the similar one he had so successfully executed at Jena. Its central idea was a mass formation with Eugène to break through the enemy's line, then by a wheel toward the south to annihilate their left, and finally to present himself victorious before Austria. If successful he might dictate his own terms. But the enemy did not advance; it was perhaps well for the Emperor of the French that they did not. An eye-witness declared that on what was supposed to be the very eve of battle there was little real discipline outside the sphere of the commander's personal observation, that the officers had no confidence in their men and the men but little in their officers, that the superiors were absorbed in securing some measure of physical comfort, that the inferiors were listless and disobedient. The forward movement was successful, and the union with Eugène was effected on April twenty-eighth. Two whole days elapsed, however, before the enemy was found, and it was May first when the French van drove in the Russian outposts from Lützen, ever famous as the scene of Wallenstein's overthrow by Gustavus Adolphus a hundred and eighty-one years earlier. The Russian center was concentrated between the Elster and the Pleisse; Napoleon's line was more extended, overlapping his enemy's, both right and left. In a preliminary skirmish at the pass of Rippach, Bessières, rashly exposing himself at the head of the cavalry of the guard, was killed. His loss in such a crisis was like the ruin of a great cohort on the eve of a close battle. Marmont, forgiven for his failure in Spain, was near; but close to Napoleon as he was, even he could not replace the gallant, trusted cavalry leader who for nearly seventeen years had scarcely quitted his Emperor's side.
Owing probably to the inadequate scouting force of Napoleon, the battle of Lützen was in the nature of a surprise. Wittgenstein had detached five thousand men as if to cover Leipsic, toward which the French line was advancing; then, concentrating the mass of his center and left, he crossed the Elster early on May second in order to attack Ney's corps on the Emperor's right. About nine Lauriston's corps, with which Napoleon was, came upon the enemy, and was fiercely engaged—so hotly, indeed, that it seemed as if it must be the Russian right wing which barred the way. A messenger was immediately despatched to bring in Ney, who arrived about eleven. The marshal and his emperor at once advanced to reconnoiter, and were just remarking that there was only a small force between them and the city, which through their field-glasses they could dimly discern in the background, its roofs crowded with curious onlookers, when behind, on the right, was heard the sound of heavy cannonading. General Bonaparte was himself at once. No movement is considered more difficult than that by which an army marching in columns wheels when attacked on its flank, so as in turn to outflank the assailants. In a flash, and apparently without a thought, the Emperor issued minute orders for this intricate manœuver, and his generals accomplished it with a masterly dexterity. Napoleon then galloped forward toward Lützen to carry the guard behind the center as a reserve, and Ney dashed into the thickest of the fight to take command of his boy conscripts, who were beginning to yield.
The conflict raged all day, with varying results, along the line from Great and Little Görschen to Starsiedel, the latter hamlet being the scene of terrific fighting. At five the Prussians withdrew from Kaja, and began to yield along the whole line as far as the Görschens, which they had so far held. Napoleon had from the outset been reckless, cheering his boys by presence and example until they fought like veterans. As the Prussians gave signs of weakness, he brought in his artillery, poor as it was, with the old grand style, and ordered the young guard into the gap he felt sure of making. A Russian reserve arrived, however, at the crucial instant, and stayed his onset until seven. At that hour Macdonald bore down his opponents at Eisdorf, and attacked the Russo-Prussian line on the flank; the second column was then hurled against its center, and the battle was ended. The Russian reserve was strong enough to prevent the retreat from becoming a rout, but since Lauriston had occupied Leipsic as early as two in the afternoon there was but one course open for the allies: to withdraw behind the Elbe. Napoleon gathered his army into three columns and followed; but slowly and circumspectly, because without cavalry he could not harass them. When, on May eighth, the French reached Dresden, they found that their enemy had blown up the bridges, and were entrenched in the Neustadt on the right, or north, shore. Thus the victory of Lützen was, after all, indecisive.
And yet the utmost skill and bravery had been shown by the combatants on both sides. The field was strewn with the corpses, not of such rude and stalwart peasants as had hitherto filled the ranks of opposing armies, but of gentle youth from French lyceums and Prussian universities. There were forty thousand in all, an equal number from each army, who remained dead or wounded on the hard-contested field. They had fallen to little purpose. The victor captured neither prisoners nor guns in important numbers, and to him it was slight compensation for the loss of Bessières that Scharnhorst was killed. The allies, though beaten, were undismayed; long experience had sharpened their wits and toughened their purpose; there was already much strategical ability at their headquarters, and there was about to be more, since Moreau, summoned from America, was soon to take service with his splendid powers against his country. Great as the battle was, it must therefore be reckoned as an ordinary victory; it served to prolong existing conditions, but it did not decide an issue. It was, however, something that it gave the French a self-confidence bordering on enthusiasm, and it was more that after Napoleon had commenced to rebuild the Dresden bridges, Frederick Augustus, the King of Saxony, declared himself favorable to the French. Abandoning Austria, he summoned his forces from Torgau, and the allies retreated eastward behind the Spree. The lower Elbe was also recovered. The King of Denmark had despatched an auxiliary force to Hamburg. Their commander, believing Napoleon's fortunes submerged already, at first assisted the Russians: but after Lützen he turned his arms to Vandamme's assistance. The city was retaken, three thousand of Bernadotte's force marched out, and on May thirtieth Davout, with fifteen thousand of his own men and three thousand Danes, marched in.
Napoleon's chief purpose, however, was unfulfilled, for Austria was neither panic-stricken nor dismayed. On the contrary, she still stood forth as a mediator, and now with armaments to enforce her demands. Immediately after Lützen, Stadion, sometime Austrian minister of war, was sent to the camp of the allies. He stated that the minimum terms of peace would be the dismemberment of Warsaw, the restoration of Prussia, the surrender by France of Holland, Oldenburg, and the Hanseatic lands, the abandonment of the protectorate over the Confederation of the Rhine by Napoleon, and the surrender to Austria of Illyria and Dalmatia, with a rectification of her western frontier. Almost simultaneously Bubna appeared at Napoleon's headquarters with suggestions for a general armistice, during which peace negotiations should be carried on as rapidly as possible by a congress of the powers. Dwelling on the necessity of territorial concessions by France for the sake of a general pacification of the Continent, the envoy declared that if this were accomplished, Great Britain, finding herself isolated, must yield, and grant to Napoleon a substantial indemnification from her vast colonial system. The propositions of Austria were received by the allies with open eagerness, by the Emperor of the French with apparent hesitancy. Next to the establishment of his continental empire, the humiliation of Great Britain was Napoleon's highest ambition. Compromise with her meant defeat. With a mixture of proud determination and anxiety, he therefore replied to Francis that he desired a pacification as ardently as any one; that he was ready for such a congress as was suggested; that he would even go further, and admit to it delegates from the insurgent Spaniards; that he would still further consent to a truce during its sessions: but that he would rather die at the head of his high-spirited Frenchmen than make himself ridiculous before England. Never was the writer's statecraft unfolded to greater daring. Long consultations were held with the King of Saxony, a man of gentleness and refinement, who was completely won by Napoleon's almost filial attentions, and Bubna was often kept at the council-table until after midnight. Eugène, however, was instantly despatched to raise a new army in Italy, with orders not to conceal his movements from Austria.
But Napoleon's chief efforts were put forth in the direction of Russia. The adroit Caulaincourt was chosen as a fitting envoy, and instructed not merely to reknit his personal relations with the Czar, but also to surrender every point which had been contested in the previous negotiations. He was to offer, first, the surrender of the Continental System as far as Russia was concerned; and, second, such a reconstruction of the map of eastern Europe as would put an end to the grand duchy of Warsaw forever. This mushroom state, with the domain of Dantzic, was to be divided between the Duke of Oldenburg, Alexander's near kinsman, and the King of Prussia; Prussia itself was to be a border state under Russian influence, with a capital at either Königsberg, Dantzic, or Warsaw. Brandenburg, with Berlin, would fall to Jerome, and Saxony would doubtless get the territory around Krossen. No surrender could have been more complete. "Your chief concern," ran the final instruction, written on May seventeenth, "will be to secure a conversation with the Emperor Alexander. My intention is to build a golden bridge to save him from the intrigues of Metternich." Alas for such vain hopes! A new diplomatic star had risen at the Russian court in the person of the young Count Nesselrode, and the personal interview so earnestly desired by Caulaincourt was steadily refused; Napoleon's proposals, the envoy was informed, must be made through the Austrian cabinet, or not at all.
During the parleyings of Austria, Napoleon won a second great victory, which was utterly ineffectual because he had no cavalry force wherewith to pursue. For some days after the occupation of Dresden, for the same reason, he had been ignorant of his enemy's whereabouts. Learning at last that the allies had not been separated, as he had hoped, but were standing at Bautzen in a strong defensive position behind the Spree, he left Dresden at noon on the eighteenth of May, determined to strike a decisive blow. His enemy, having been reinforced by Barclay with sixteen thousand Russians and by Kleist with eleven thousand Prussians, was about ninety thousand strong. On the nineteenth both Barclay and York advanced from Bautzen; the former was defeated by Bertrand in a sharp struggle, the latter by Lauriston in a protracted fight; and at nightfall the French were before the place. In front was the unimportant stream, and beyond it were the allies in a double line, their front on the bank, their rear on the heights behind. About midday of the twentieth the French attacked. Macdonald stormed the bridge, Marmont and Bertrand crossed by pontoons; at three their footing was won, and the assault of the place began. For three hours the fighting was terrific, but at six a portion of the defenders withdrew behind the town to the second line; at eight the rest did likewise. Next morning at five, Napoleon, after a sleepless night, issued his orders; at eight the conflict opened all along the line. Then first, the Mameluke body-servant having spread a couch of skins, the Emperor sought repose; he slept to the lullaby of cannon and musketry for several hours, calmly assured of his combinations working perfectly. By one Ney had rolled up the Russian right under Barclay, and Napoleon, waking, sent Marmont and Bertrand around the right of the enemy's center. By four the allied armies were in full retreat. Then would have been the moment for artillery to crash and cavalry to pursue; but neither was efficient, and while the French army did what men could do, at best they could only follow at equal speed with the foe, and could not throw his ranks into disorder. "What! no results from such carnage?" said Napoleon. "Not a gun? Not a prisoner?"
There was worse to come. From time to time the flying columns wheeled and poured a heavy artillery fire into their pursuers. Near Reichenbach, Bruyères was killed by a ball; then Kirchener by another, which, ricochetting from a tree, mortally wounded Duroc, the commander's faithful aid, his second self. Such a blow was stupefying indeed, for it was the loss of his closest confidant, of one who through every vicissitude had been a near, true friend, almost the only companion of a man reduced to solitude by his great elevation. Napoleon was stricken to the heart, and, halting, gave way until nightfall to his despair. "Poor man!" said the troopers one to another, "he has lost his children." "Everything to-morrow," was the sorrowing ruler's one reply to all suggestions. From time to time he betook himself to the bedside of the dying man; at last Duroc himself could no longer endure his Emperor's prostration, and besought him to rejoin the soldiers. The friends parted in a long embrace. Thereupon the pursuit was continued, but without ardor and without success.