] the French
were now 140,000 strong, while the allies had barely 95,000 at hand.
But the Prussian veteran, usually as daring as a lion, was now wily as
a fox. Under cover of stiff outpost affairs, he skilfully withdrew to
the south-east, hoping to lure the French into the depths of Silesia
and so give time to Schwarzenberg to seize Dresden.

[Illustration: CAMPAIGN OF 1813]

But Napoleon was not to be drawn further afield. Seeing that his foes
could not be forced to a pitched battle, he intrusted the command to
Macdonald, and rapidly withdrew with Ney and his Guard towards
Goerlitz; for he now saw the possible danger to Dresden if
Schwarzenberg struck home. If, however, that leader remained on the
defensive, the Emperor determined to fall back on what had all along
been his second plan, and make a rush through the Lusatian defiles on
Prague.[350] But a despatch from St. Cyr, which reached him at Goerlitz
late at night on the 23rd, showed that Dresden was in serious danger
from the gathering masses of the allies. This news consigned his
second plan to the limbo of vain hopes. Yet, as will appear a little
later, his determination to defend by taking the offensive soon took
form in yet a third design for the destruction of the allies.

It is a proof of the quenchless pugnacity of his mind that he framed
this plan during the fatigues of the long forced march back towards
Dresden, amidst pouring rain and the discouragement of knowing that
his raid into Silesia had ended merely in the fruitless wearying of
his choicest troops. Accompanied by the Old Guard, the Young Guard, a
division of infantry, and Latour-Maubourg's cavalry, he arrived at
Stolpen, south-east of Dresden, before dawn of the 25th. Most of the
battalions had traversed forty miles in little more than forty-eight
hours, and that, too, after a partial engagement at Loewenberg, and
despite lack of regular rations. Leaving him for a time, we turn to
glance at the fortunes of the war in Brandenburg and Silesia.

Napoleon had bidden Oudinot, with his own corps and those of Reynier
and Bertrand, in all about 70,000 men, to fight his way to Berlin,
disperse the Landwehr and the "mad rabble" there, and, if the city
resisted, set it in flames by the fire of fifty howitzers. That
Marshal found that a tough resistance awaited him, although the allied
commander-in-chief, Bernadotte, moved with the utmost caution, as if
he were bent on justifying Napoleon's recent sneer