nbach, Cathcart now advanced
L250,000 at once; and the knowledge that our financial support was
given to the federative paper notes issued by the allies enabled the
Court of Vienna privately to raise loans and to wage war with a vigour
wholly unexpected by Napoleon.[347]
Certainly the allied Grand Army suffered from no lack of advisers. The
Czar, the Emperor Francis, and the King of Prussia were there; as a
compliment to Austria, the command was intrusted to Field-Marshal
Schwarzenberg, a man of diplomatic ability rather than of military
genius. By his side were the Russians, Wittgenstein, Barclay, and
Toll, the Prussian Knesebeck, the Swiss Jomini, and, above all,
Moreau.
The last-named, as we have seen, came over on the inducement of
Bernadotte, and was received with great honour by the allied
sovereigns. Jomini also was welcomed for his knowledge of the art of
war. This great writer had long served as a French general; but the
ill-treatment that he had lately suffered at Berthier's hands led him,
on August 14th, to quit the French service and pass over to the
allies. His account of his desertion, however, makes it clear that he
had not penetrated Napoleon's designs, for the best of all reasons,
because the Emperor kept them to himself to the very last moment.[348]
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 th
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