On the 2d of May Napoleon won the battle of Lutzen.  A week after he was at Dresden, not as on his departure for the Russian campaign, like the Sovereign of the West surrounded by his mighty vassals:  he was now in the capital of the only one of the monarchs of his creation who remained faithful to the French cause, and whose good faith eventually cost him half his dominions.  The Emperor stayed only ten days in Dresden, and then went in pursuit of the Russian army, which he came up with on the 19th, at Bautzen.  This battle, which was followed on the two succeeding days by the battles of Wurtchen and Oclikirchen, may be said to have lasted three days—­a sufficient proof that it was obstinately disputed.  It ended in favour of Napoleon, but he and France paid dearly for it:  while General Kirschner and Duroc were talking together the former was killed by a cannon-ball, which mortally wounded the latter in the abdomen.

The moment had now arrived for Austria to prove whether or not she. intended entirely to desert the cause of Napoleon.

—­[There is a running attack in Erreurs (tome, ii. pp, 289-325) on all this part of the Memoirs, but the best account of the negotiations between France, Austria, and the Allies will be found in Metternich, Vol. i. pp. 171-215.  Metternich, with good reason, prides himself on the skill with which he gained from Napoleon the exact time, twenty days, necessary for the concentration of the Austrian armies.  Whether the negotiations were consistent with good faith on the part of Austria is another matter; but, one thing seems clear—­the Austrian marriage ruined Napoleon.  He found it impossible to believe that the monarch who had given him his daughter would strike the decisive blow against him.  Without this belief there can be no doubt that he would have attacked Austria before she could have collected her forces, and Metternich seems to have dreaded the result.  “It was necessary, therefore to prevent Napoleon from carrying out his usual system of leaving an army of observation before the Allied armies, and himself turning to Bohemia to deal a great blow at us, the effect of which it would be impossible to foresee in the present depressed state of the great majority of our men” (Metternich, Vol. i, p. 177).  With our knowledge of how Napoleon held his own against the three armies at Dresden we may safely assume that he would have crushed Austria if she had not joined him or disarmed.  The conduct of Austria was natural and politic, but it was only successful because Napoleon believed in the good faith of the Emperor Francis, his father-in-law.  It is to be noted that Austria only succeeded in getting Alexander to negotiate on the implied condition that the negotiations were not to end in a peace with France.  See Metternich, Vol. i. p. 181, where, in answer to the Czar’s question as to what would become of their cause if Napoleon accepted the