aid 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 was to
take up a position west or south-west of Pirna so as to cut off the
retreat of the foe.

Accordingly, he set out from Stolpen at dawn of the 26th, and on the
next two days fought his way far round the rear of the allied Grand
Army. A Russian force of 14,000 men, led by the young Prince Eugene of
Wuertemberg and Count Ostermann, sought in vain to stop his progress:
though roughly handled on the 28th by the French, the Muscovites
disengaged themselves, fell back ever fighting to the Nollendorf pass,
and took up a strong position behind the village of Kulm. There they
received timely support from the forces of the Czar and Frederick
William, who, after crossing by the Zinnwald pass, heard the firing on
the east and divined the gravity of the crisis. Unless they kept
Van