The second part of the campaign opens with the curious sight of immense forces, commanded by experienced leaders, acting in complete ignorance of the moves of the enemy only some fifty miles away.  Leaving Bautzen on August 17th, Napoleon proceeded eastwards to Goerlitz, turned off thence to Zittau, and hearing a false rumour that the Russo-Prussian force in Bohemia was only 40,000 strong, returned to Goerlitz with the aim of crushing Bluecher.  Disputes about the armistice had given that enterprising leader the excuse for entering the neutral zone before its expiration; and he had had sharp affairs with Macdonald and Ney near Loewenberg on the River Bober.  Napoleon hurried up with his Guards, eager to catch Bluecher;[349] 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.