The campaign opened May 2, 1813, southwest of Leipsic, with the battle of Lützen. It was Napoleon’s victory, though he could not follow it up, as he had no cavalry. The moral effect of Lützen was excellent in the French army. Among the allies there was a return to the old dread of the “monster.” By May 8th the French occupied Dresden; from there they crossed the Elbe, and on the 21st fought the battle of Bautzen, another incomplete victory for Napoleon. The next day, in an engagement with the Russian rear guard, Marshal Duroc, one of Napoleon’s warmest and oldest friends, was killed. It was the second marshal lost since the campaign began, Bessières having been killed at Lützen. The French obtained Breslau on June 1st, and three days later an armistice was signed, lasting until August 10th. It was hoped that peace might be concluded during this armistice. At that moment Austria held the key to the situation. The allies saw that they were defeated if they could not persuade her to join them. Napoleon, his old confidence restored by a series of victories, hoped to keep his Austrian father-in-law quiet until he had crushed the Prussians and driven the Russians across the Nieman. Austria saw her power, and determined to use it to regain territory lost in 1805 and 1809, and Metternich came to Dresden to see Napoleon. Austria would keep peace with France, he said if Napoleon would restore Illyria and the Polish provinces, would send the Pope back to Rome, give up the protectorate of the Confederation of the Rhine, restore Naples and Spain. Napoleon’s amazement and indignation were boundless. [Illustration: THE DUKE OF REICHSTADT. Engraved by Benedetti, after Daffinger.] “How much has England given you for playing this _rôle_ against me, Metternich?” he asked. A semblance of a congress was held at Prague soon after, but it was only a mockery. Such was the exasperation and suffering of Central Europe, that peace could only be reached by large sacrifices on Napoleon’s part. These he refused to make. There is no doubt but that France and his allies begged him to compromise; that his wisest counsellors advised him to do so. But he repulsed with irritation all such suggestions. “You bore me continually about the necessity of peace,” he wrote Savary. “I know the situation of my empire better than you do; no one is more interested in concluding peace than myself, but I shall not make a dishonorable peace, or one that would see us at war again in six months.... These things do not concern you.”