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.  Both his legs had been shot off.  He continued to smoke a cigar while they were amputated and dressed, in the presence of Alexander, and died shortly after; thus, if he had erred, paying the early forfeit of his errors.

But Fortune had only revisited the banners of her ancient favourite with a momentary gleam of sunshine.  The fatigues he had undergone between the 15th and the 28th of August would have broken any other frame, and they, for the time, weakened his.  It is said that a mess of mutton and garlic, the only food he had tasted on the 26th, had besides deranged his stomach.  Unable to remain with the columns in the rear of Schwartzenberg, he returned to Dresden weary and sick; and thenceforth evil tidings awaited him.