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The forces, and more especially the artillery, of Russia, were far too overwhelming to permit the thought of a regular opposition in pitched battles, even with a less dilapidated state of their resources than they could reasonably expect at the period of their arrival on the Torgau. In their speed lay their only hope in strength of foot, as before, and not in strength of arm.
They were also required to hold themselves in readiness to accompany him on his journey to Augsburg. There was, however, no hurry about arriving there; for the Emperor came thither so slowly from Italy, that it was found impossible to meet on the day originally appointed. On April 3 Luther, Melancthon, and Jonas went to the Elector at Torgau, in order to start with him from there.
The tramp of the columns as they come in to worship jar the warrior's ashes. The dusky standards captured in the Seven Years' War droop about him. The hundred intervening years have blackened them, already singed in the fire of Zorndorf, Leuthen, and Torgau. The moth makes still larger the rent where the volleys passed.
At Erfurt Gustavus was joined by Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar with his force, which raised his army to a strength of 20,000. The news of his approach had again revived the courage of the Elector of Saxony, who had occupied the only towns where the Elbe could be crossed, Dresden, Torgau, and Wittenberg he himself, with his main army of 15,000 men, lying at Torgau.
The Prussian monarch, therefore, determined to support him with all possible expedition. In a few days after the battle he began his march from Custrin, with a reinforcement of twenty-four battalions and great part of his cavalry, and pursued his route with such unwearied diligence, that by the fifth day of September lie reached Torgau, and on the eleventh joined his brother.
In two or three minutes the man returned, and led Karl to a room where the count was awaiting him, with a look of great anxiety on his face. "All is well, your excellency," Karl said, in answer to the look. "At least, if not altogether well, not so bad as it might be. The colonel was hit at Torgau. A cannonball took off his left arm at the elbow.
Throwing a bridge across the Elbe at Torgau, he gave out that he intended to penetrate through Meissen into the Upper Palatinate in Bavaria; at Barby he also made a movement, as if to pass that river, but continued to move down the Elbe as far as Havelburg, where he astonished his troops by informing them that he was leading them against the Danes in Holstein.
The princess, in her answer to the fourth deputation of the merchants, declared that she beheld the present state of their trade with the most anxious concern; that its want of protection was not her fault, but that of the towns of Dort, Haerlem, Amsterdam, Torgau, Rotterdam, and the Brille, to whose conduct it was owing, that the forces of the state, by sea and land, were not now on a better footing.
Frost, however, and snow at length ceased to persecute; the vast extent of the march at length brought them into more genial latitudes, and the unusual duration of the march was gradually bringing them into the more genial seasons of the year: Two thousand miles had at least been traversed; February, March, April were gone; the balmy month of May had opened; vernal sights and sounds came from every side to comfort the heart-weary travellers; and at last, in the latter end of May, they crossed the Torgau, and took up a position where they hoped to find liberty to repose themselves for many weeks in comfort as well as in security, and to draw such supplies from the fertile neighborhood as might restore their shattered forces to a condition for executing, with less of wreck and ruin, the large remainder of the journey.
He also was wholly defeated; 10,000 prisoners and forty-six guns remained in the hands of Bernadotte; and Ney retreated in confusion upon Torgau. Napoleon had now recovered his health and activity; and the exertions which he made at this period were never surpassed, even by himself.
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