Nevertheless, the miseries of the night, the heavy rains of the dawning day and the knowledge of the strength of the enemy’s position in front and of Vandamme’s movement in their rear, failed to daunt their spirits.  If they were determined, Napoleon was radiant with hope.  His force, though smaller, held the inner line and spread over some three miles; while the concave front of the allies extended over double that space, and their left wing was separated from the centre by the stream and defile of Plauen.  From his inner position he could therefore readily throw an overpowering mass on any part of their attenuated array.  He prepared to do so against their wings.  At those points everything promised success to his methods of attack.

Never, perhaps, in all modern warfare has the musket been so useless as amidst the drenching rains which beat upon the fighters at the Katzbach and before Dresden.  So defective was its firing arrangement then that after a heavy storm only a feeble sputter came from whole battalions of foot:  and on those two eventful days the honours lay with the artillery and l’arme blanche.  As for the infantrymen, they could effect little except in some wild snatches of bayonet work at close quarters.  This explains the course of events both at the Katzbach on the 26th, and at Dresden on the following day.  The allied centre was too strongly posted on the slopes south of Dresden to be assailed with much hope of success.  But, against the Russian vanguard on the allied right, Napoleon launched Mortier’s corps and Nansouty’s cavalry with complete success, until Wittgenstein’s masses on the heights stayed the French onset.  Along the centre, some thousand cannon thundered against one another, but with no very noteworthy result, save that Moreau had his legs carried away by a shot from a field battery that suddenly opened upon the Czar’s suite.  It was the first shot that dealt him this fatal wound, but several other balls fell among the group until Alexander and his staff moved away.

Meanwhile the great blow was struck by Napoleon at the allied left.  There the Austrian wing was sundered from the main force by the difficult defile of Plauen; and it was crushed by one of the Emperor’s most brilliant combinations.  Directing Victor with 20,000 men of all arms to engage the white-coats in front, he bade Murat, with 10,000 horsemen, steal round near the bank of the Elbe and charge their flank and rear.  The division of Count Metzko bore the brunt of this terrible onset.  Nobly it resisted.  Though not one musket in fifty would fire, the footmen in one place beat off two charges of Latour-Maubourg’s cuirassiers, until he headed his line with lancers, who mangled their ranks and opened a way for the sword.[359] Then all was slaughter; and as Murat’s squadrons raged along their broken lines, 10,000 footmen, cut off from the main body, laid 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.