on the 23rd.

Having driven St. Cyr, and his 20,000 men, before him, Schwartzenberg
(with whom were the Sovereigns of Russia and Prussia in person) made his
appearance on the heights to the south of the Saxon capital, on the
25th. The army of St. Cyr had thrown themselves into the city, and it
was now surrounded with fortifications of considerable strength. Yet had
this vast host attacked it at once, there is every reason to believe it
must have fallen before Napoleon could have returned from Silesia. They
delayed, for whatever reason, until daybreak on the 26th; and then
assailed Dresden in six columns, each more numerous than its garrison.
St. Cyr already began to despair, when the imperial guard made their
appearance crossing the bridge from the Eastern side of the Elbe, and in
the midst of them Napoleon. A German author[63] says: "It was then that,
for the first time, I beheld his face. He came on with the eye of a
tyrant, and the voice of a lion, urging his breathless and eager
soldiers." Two sallies were on the instant executed by these troops, hot
as they were from their long and toilsome march. The Allies were driven
back for some space. Night set in, and the two armies remained in
presence till the morning. Then, amidst a fierce storm of wind and rain,
Napoleon renewed the battle. 200,000 men (such had been the rapid
decision of his orders to his various generals) were now gathered round
him, and he poured them out with such skill, on either flank of the
enemy's line that ere the close of the day, they were forced to withdraw
altogether from their attempt. Ney and Murat on the left flank, and
Vandamme on the right (at Pirna), had taken possession of the two chief
roads into Bohemia, and in consequence they were compelled to retreat by
the comparatively difficult country paths between. On either side 8000
men had been slain or wounded; but with the French there remained from
15 to 20,000 prisoners, and twenty-six cannon; and the ablest of all the
enemy's generals had fallen.

Early in the day Buonaparte himself ordered some half-dozen cannon to be
fired at once upon a group, apparently of reconnoitring officers, and
this was followed by a movement which was thought to indicate that some
personage of importance had been wounded. A peasant came in the evening,
and brought with him a bloody boot and a greyhound, both the property,
he said, of the great man who was no more: the name on the collar was
_Moreau_. Bot