[Footnote B: There was a story current that Napoleon's indisposition on the 28th of August was caused by his eating heartily of a shoulder of mutton stuffed with garlic, not the wholesomest food in the world; and the digestive powers having been reduced by long exposure to damp, this dish may have been too much for them. Thiers says that the Imperial illness at Pirna was "a malady invented by flatterers," and yet only a few pages before he says that "Napoleon proceeded to Pirna, where he arrived about noon, and where, after having partaken of a slight repast, he was seized with a pain in the stomach, to which he was subject after exposure to damp." Napoleon suffered from stomach complaints from an early period of his career, and one of their effects is greatly to lessen the powers of the sufferer's mind. His want of energy at Borodino was attributed to a disordered stomach, and the Russians were simply beaten, not destroyed, on that field. When he beard of Vandamme's defeat, Napoleon said, "One should make a bridge of gold for a flying enemy, where it is impossible, as in Vandamme's case, to oppose to him a bulwark of steel." He forgot that his own plan was to have opposed to the enemy a bulwark of steel, and that the non-existence of that bulwark on the 30th of August was owing to his own negligence. Still, the reverse at Kulm might not have proved so terribly fatal, had it not been preceded by the reverses on the Katzbach, which also were owing to the heavy rains, and news of which was the cause of the halting of so large a portion of his pursuing force at Pirna, and the march of many of his best men back to Dresden, his intention being to attempt the restoration of affairs in that quarter, where they had been so sadly compromised under Macdonald's direction. He was as much overworked by the necessity of attending to so many theatres of action as his armies were overmatched in the field by the superior numbers of the Allies. He is said to have repeated the following lines, after musing for a while on the news from Kulm:-- "J'ai servi, commandé, vaincu quarante années; Du monde entre mes mains j'ai tu les destinées, Et j'ai toujours connu qu'en chaque événement Le destin des états dépendait d'un moment." But he had hours, we might say days, to settle his destiny, and was not tied down to a moment. Afterward he had the fairness to admit that he had lost a great opportunity to regain the ascendency in not supporting Vandamme with the whole of the Young Guard.]