These instructions having been written, Napoleon at first contemplated crossing the Elbe above Dresden to take Schwarzenberg on the flank and rear in the passes of the Ore Mountains. This would not only cut off the Austrian general from the Saxon capital, but prevent his swerving to the left for an advance on Leipsic. But finding that his enemy was moving swiftly, the Emperor resolved to meet him before Dresden. It would never do to lose his ally's capital at the outset, or to suffer defeat at the very head of his defensive line. Giving orders, therefore, for the corps of Marmont, Vandamme, and Victor, together with Latour-Maubourg's cavalry and the guard, to wheel, he hastened back to reinforce Saint-Cyr at Dresden. On the twenty-fifth, as he passed Bautzen, he learned that Oudinot had been defeated at Luckau; but he gave no heed to the report, and next day reached Dresden at nine in the morning. An hour later the guard came up, having performed the almost incredible feat of marching seventy-six miles in three days. Vandamme, with forty thousand men, had arrived at Pirna, a few miles above, and Saint-Cyr was drawing in behind the temporary fortifications of the city itself.
The enemy, too, was at hand, but he had no plan. In a council of war held by him the same morning there was protracted debate, and finally Moreau's advice to advance in six columns was taken. He refused "to fight against his country," but explained that the French could never be conquered in mass, and that if one assailing column were crushed, the rest could still push on. This long deliberation cost the allies their opportunity; for at four in the afternoon, when they attacked, the mass of the French army had crossed the Elbe and had thus completed the garrison of the city. For two hours the fighting was fierce and stubborn; from three different sides Russians, Austrians, and Prussians each made substantial gains; at six Napoleon determined to make a general sally and throw in his guard. With fine promptness. Mortier, at the head of two divisions of the young guard, attacked the Russians, and, fighting until midnight, drove them beyond the hamlet of Striefen. Saint-Cyr dislodged the Prussians, and pushed them to Strehla; while Ney, with two divisions of the young guard, threw a portion of the Austrians into Plauen, and Murat, with two divisions of infantry and Latour-Maubourg's cavalry, cleared the suburb Friedrichstadt of the rest. Napoleon, alert and ubiquitous, then made his usual round, and knew when he retired to rest in the royal palace that with seventy thousand men, or rather boys, he had repulsed a hundred and fifty thousand of his foe. His inspiriting personal work might be calculated as worth eighty thousand of his opponents' best men. That night both Marmont and Victor, with their corps, entered the city; and Vandamme in the early dawn began to bombard Pirna, thus threatening the allies' connection with Bohemia and drawing away forces from them to hold that outpost.