interview at once with the Czar:  “The essential thing is to have a talk with him....  My intention is to build him a golden bridge so as to deliver him from the intrigues of Metternich.  If I must make sacrifices, I prefer to make them to a straightforward enemy, rather than to the profit of Austria, which Power has betrayed my alliance, and, under the guise of mediator, means to claim the right of arranging everything.”  Caulaincourt is to remind Alexander how badly Austria behaved to him in 1812, and to suggest that if he treats at once before losing another battle, he can retire with honour and with good terms for Prussia, without any intervention from Austria.

His other letters of this time show that it is on the Hapsburgs that his resentment will most heavily fall.  Eugene, who had recently departed to organize the forces in Italy, is urged to threaten Austria with not fewer than 80,000 men, and to give out that he will soon have 150,000 men under arms.  And, while straining every nerve in Germany, France, and Italy, Napoleon asserts that there will be an armistice for the conclusion of a general peace.[297] But the allies were not to be duped into a peace that was no peace.  They had good grounds for expecting the eventual aid of Austria; and when Caulaincourt craved an interview, the Czar refused his request, thus bringing affairs once more to the arbitrament of the sword.  The only effect of Caulaincourt’s mission, and of Napoleon’s bitter words to Bubna, was to alarm Austria.

On their side, the allies desired to risk no further check; and they had therefore taken up a strong position near Bautzen, where they could receive reinforcements and effectually cover Silesia.  Their extreme left rested on the spurs of the Lusatian mountains, while their long front of some four miles in extent stretched northwards along a ridge that rose between the River Spree and an affluent, and bent a convex threatening brow against that river and town.  There they were joined by Barclay, whose arrival brought their total strength to 82,000 men.  But again Napoleon had the advantage in numbers.  Suddenly calling in Ney’s and Lauriston’s force of 60,000 men, which had been sent north so as to threaten Berlin, he confronted the allies with at least 130,000 men.[298]

On the first day of fighting (May 20th) the French seized the town of Bautzen, but failed to drive the allies from the hilly, wooded ground on the south.  The fighting on the next day was far more serious.  At dawn of a beautiful spring morning, in a country radiant with verdure and diversified by trim villages, the thunder of cannon and the sputter of skirmishers’ lines presaged a stubborn conflict.  The allied sovereigns from the commanding ridge at their centre could survey all the enemy’s movements on the hills opposite; and our commissary, Colonel (afterwards Sir Hudson) Lowe, has thus described his view of Napoleon, who was near the French centre: