fighters at the
Katzbach and before Dresden. So defective was its firing arrangement
then that after a heavy storm only a feeble sputter came from whole
battalions of foot: and on those two eventful days the honours lay
with the artillery and _l'arme blanche_. As for the infantrymen, they
could effect little except in some wild snatches of bayonet work at
close quarters. This explains the course of events both at the
Katzbach on the 26th, and at Dresden on the following day. The allied
centre was too strongly posted on the slopes south of Dresden to be
assailed with much hope of success. But, against the Russian vanguard
on the allied right, Napoleon launched Mortier's corps and Nansouty's
cavalry with complete success, until Wittgenstein's masses on the
heights stayed the French onset. Along the centre, some thousand
cannon thundered against one another, but with no very noteworthy
result, save that Moreau had his legs carried away by a shot from a
field battery that suddenly opened upon the Czar's suite. It was the
first shot that dealt him this fatal wound, but several other balls
fell among the group until Alexander and his staff moved away.

Meanwhile the great blow was struck by Napoleon at the allied left.
There the Austrian wing was sundered from the main force by the
difficult defile of Plauen; and it was crushed by one of the Emperor's
most brilliant combinations. Directing Victor with 20,000 men of all
arms to engage the white-coats in front, he bade Murat, with 10,000
horsemen, steal round near the bank of the Elbe and charge their flank
and rear. The division of Count Metzko bore the brunt of this terrible
onset. Nobly it resisted. Though not one musket in fifty would fire,
the footmen in one place beat off two charges of Latour-Maubourg's
cuirassiers, until he headed his line with lancers, who mangled their
ranks and opened a way for the sword.[359] Then all was slaughter; and
as Murat's squadrons raged along their broken lines, 10,000 footmen,
cut off from the main body, laid down their arms. News of this
disaster on the left and the sound of Vandamme's cannon thundering
among the hills west of Pirna decided the allied sovereigns and
Schwarzenberg to prepare for a timely retreat into Bohemia. Yet so
bold a front did they keep at the centre and right that the waning
light showed the combatants facing each other there on even terms.

During the night, the rumbling of wagons warned Marmont's scouts that
t