Upon Napoleon's return to Paris he laid the state of his affairs candidly before the Senate, and they immediately voted him 350,000 men to repair his losses. Having accomplished this point, he was not disposed, like some of his Royal enemies, to waste his time in the lap of luxury and slothful, inglorious idleness; he therefore set off and joined his army again at Mentz, on the 20th of April. He opened the campaign by the battle of Leitzen, in which the French arms were once more victorious. This was followed up by two successful battles at Baultzen and Wiertzen, which compelled the Allies to repass the Oder. Napoleon then proposed an armistice, which was accepted; but, as the terms of peace could not be settled, the war re-commenced, and with great disadvantage to the French. The Crown Prince of Sweden, who had deserted his benefactor, and joined the Allies against him in the North of Germany, now took the field with a formidable army. But the fatal blow to Napoleon was the defection of Austria, which never joined the coalition on the 12th of August. The Allies having united all their forces, to the number of 180,000 men, the French army now took up a position on the river Elbe, and attacked Napoleon in his position near Dresden; but they were foiled, and compelled to retire into Bohemia by the superiority of his military skill. This advantage was, however, rendered of no avail by the loss of a division of 12,000 men under Vandamme, who had imprudently entangled himself in the defiles of Bohemia, where he was surrounded and compelled to surrender. Macdonald was also defeated, with heavy loss, in Silesia; and Marshal Ney at Dennewitz. Bavaria, which owed so much to Napoleon, now not only abandoned him, but also united its forces with those of Austria, its natural enemy. Napoleon had by this time taken up a position in the neighbourhood of Leipsic, and to that spot the combined forces, consisting of 330,000 men, advanced to give him battle. The French army was not more than 175,000 strong. The battle, or rather succession of battles, lasted from the 16th to the 19th of October, and was sanguinary beyond example. The scale was, at length, decisively turned against the French by the desertion of the Saxons, who went over to the Allies, and turned their cannon against their recent comrades at the critical period of the contest. The French were compelled to commence their retreat, and by the destruction of a bridge their rear-guard was cut off, and made prisoners. They fell back towards the Rhine, and found the Bavarian army posted at Hanau to intercept them. The Bavarians were, however, defeated, and the French army reached the Rhine.