But for this dilatoriness he could almost certainly have taken the Saxon capital. As things turned out, St. Cyr's three divisions proved staunch enough to hold off the first assaults and, that very morning, Napoleon returned. Halting on the bridge over the Elbe, he swiftly deployed the army he had brought back with him from Silesia, and despatched General Vandamme with a strong force to Pima, from where he could fall on the Allies' rear.
Early on the 27th Napoleon launched a full-scale attack and, although the Allied army exceeded the French by some forty thousand men, by afternoon their left wing had been shattered, which led to a general retreat. The weather was appalling, the roads bad and that night Russians, Prussians and Austrians were fleeing in hopeless disorder. They had lost ten thousand killed and wounded, and fifteen thousand had been taken prisoner. On the following day they were relentlessly pursued, and lost a further five thousand men.
Such was Napoleon's great victory at Dresden, but he was robbed of its fruits a few days later. While the Allies strove to stem the retreat and bring up reinforcements, the King of Prussia appealed to the Russian General Ostermann to use the reserve division he commanded in an endeavour to check the French advance. On the 30th the fifteen thousand Russians fought heroically against great odds, lost half their number, but succeeded in holding Vandamme before Kulm. By the following day von Kleist's Prussians had outflanked the French, and both the Russians and Austrians, now fifty thousand strong, attacked them fiercely. At Kulm two divisions laid down their arms, and ten thousand prisoners were taken, including Vandamme himself. For him this was a great misfortune, as he was one of Napoleon's ablest Generals and, but for this defeat, might soon have been made a Marshal.
Such was the situation, as far as it was known to Roger, when he rode into the great camp just outside Dresden on the afternoon of September 6th.
Whenever Roger rejoined Napoleon, it had always been his custom first to see Duroc, the Grand Marshal of Palaces and Camps, who had long been a close personal friend of his, to learn from him how matters were going and the mood of the Emperor. Stopping a Lieutenant, he enquired of him the whereabouts of Duroc's quarters.
The young officer looked up at him in surprise and replied, 'Did you not know, Sir, the Duc de Friuli is dead? He was killed by a cannon ball that ploughed right through the Emperor's staff on the day after the battle of Bautzen.'
This was a great blow to Roger, as he knew it must also have been to the Emperor, since for nearly twenty years Duroc had been Napoleon's constant companion, and a man for whom he had a very deep affection.
For a few minutes Roger remained seated on his halted horse, his head bowed in sadness; then another horseman cantered by, glanced at him in passing, abruptly pulled up and exclaimed:
rMon Dieu! If it's not le brave Breuc! We thought you long since dead on the plains of Russia.'
Swinging round, Roger recognised Caulaincourt, Duc de Vicenza, a soldier-diplomat whom he had known for many years, and said, ‘I got cut off, but had the good luck to escape. At the moment though, I am quite overwhelmed, for I have only just learnt that poor Duroc is dead.'
The Duc nodded. 'Alas, yes. Without him at headquarters things will never be the same. Neither will the Imperial Guard without Bessieres as its commander. He was killed at Lutzen.'
‘I must then condole with the Emperor on the loss of both when I report to him.'
'You would do better to wait for a more propitious moment, both to report and to condole. He got back to Dresden from one of his reconnaissances in force only this morning, so is up to his eyes in business and in a far from good humour. Wait until this evening, and in the meantime accompany me to my quarters, where I can provide you with refreshment and you can rest for an hour or two.'
Roger happily agreed, as Caulaincourt was one of the Emperor's closest confidants. He came of a noble Picardy family and, when Bemadotte was Minister of War, had been given by him the command of a crack cavalry regiment. Under the Consulate Talleyrand had, on discovering that Caulaincourt had an excellent brain, sent him as Ambassador to Russia. On his return Bonaparte had made him an A.D.C., and it was then that Roger had first come to know him.
Later, when Napoleon had become Emperor, he had made Caulaincourt, Grand Equerry then, in 1807, sent him again as Ambassador to Russia. He had got on excellently with the Czar and his advisers, and done everything he possibly could to prevent war between the two countries, but failed. Having accompanied Napoleon in the retreat from Moscow, he had left the shattered army with him when he abandoned it to return in haste to Paris, and since had handled the negotiations that had led to the armistice of June-July.
In his marquee, over a bottle of excellent hock, he gave Roger the inside information about what had been going on. As one of Napoleon's most loyal subordinates, he lamented the state into which his master had fallen. He said that the Emperor, unlike his old self, was now a prey to constant indecision, wasted hours and sometimes days in sleeping or lazing about and, instead of concentrating his forces, tended to disperse them. It was his failure to follow up and swiftly support Vandamme which had led to that General's defeat and capture; and his attempt to take Berlin had been both ill-judged and disastrous.
Roger had heard nothing of this last. Napoleon had always disliked Bernadotte, so had displayed ungovernable rage when he learned that his ex-Marshal had actually brought Sweden into the war on the side of the allies, and had sworn to be avenged on him. When the war reopened, the allies had put Bernadotte in command of their army of the north, which consisted of some one hundred and twenty thousand Prussians, Russians and Swedes. Instead of concentrating all his forces against the Allies' main army on the far side of the Elbe, Napoleon's personal hatred of Bernadotte had led him in mid-August to despatch Marshal Oudinot with sixty thousand men, and General Girard's division of fourteen thousand in support, to capture Berlin.
French intelligence reported that there had been dissension among the Allies. Bernadotte, afraid to try conclusions with Napoleon, had been for retiring behind the Havel and Spree, but the Prussians were determined to die if they had to in front of their capital rather than behind it, and had pushed the Swedish Crown Prince into letting them have their way. After some initial successes, Oudinot was surprised by an independent corps of Prussians on his right; his centre, under Regnier, was driven back and, a few days later, Girard's division was almost annihilated. So this pointless attempt against Berlin had led to another defeat for the Emperor, and the loss of some ten thousand men.
The bottle of hock being finished and Roger having given a brief account of his movements since escaping from Russia, he took his ease while Caulaincourt settled down to work at his desk. An hour or so later an adjutant brought him a despatch. Having glanced at it, he sprang up from his chair with an excited shout:
'Here is splendid news! That traitor Moreau is dead. His legs were blown off by a cannon-ball during last week's battle.'
Moreau had first become famous as a General during the wars of the Revolution and, while Bonaparte had been in Italy, won the great battle of Hohenlinden. But he was a die-hard Republican, and his enormous popularity with the people had made him an obvious leader of any movement to curb the powers of a dictator, which Bonaparte as First Consul was already showing signs of assuming. To forestall any such danger to his position Napoleon had had him and a number of other Jacobins brought to trial for conspiring against the State. They had been condemned—in Moreau's case probably unjustly—but, fearing a popular outcry, Bonaparte had not dared order the hero's execution, so had sent him into exile.