At the opening of the campaign Russia and Prussia bore all the fighting for the allies, their forces numbering 133,000. Kutusoff, until his death in the early stages of the war, took command of the combined forces; the right wing being under Wittgenstein, who succeeded him; the left wing under Blücher. In point of numbers Napoleon was far ahead, having some 200,000 troops at his disposal, divided into the Army of the Elbe of 60,000, the Army of the Main of about 105,000, and 40,000 Italians and Bavarians. The Emperor’s first step was to occupy Leipzig, not a difficult movement seeing that he had 145,000 men, while the Allies had only 80,000 to bring to bear on any one point. The headquarters of the latter were at Dresden. On the 3rd May 1813, two days after an action at Weissenfels in which Marshal Bessières was killed by a cannon-ball, the battle of Gross-Görschen (sometimes called Lützen) was fought, the Russian and Prussian soldiers selling their lives dearly for the cause they had so much at heart, indeed they lost considerably less in killed and wounded than the enemy. There was a disposition on the part of some of the French conscripts to run away at the first taste of real warfare, but when Napoleon approached and said, “Young men, I reckoned on you to save the Empire, and you fly!” they took heart and fought as valiantly as the veterans. Both the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia watched from an adjacent hill the great sea of men contest the cluster of villages around which the battle centred. It was not until Napoleon brought up reinforcements that the fate of the day was decided in his favour, no fewer than four of the five villages having fallen into the hands of the Allies, who now retreated towards Dresden. Even then the fiery old Blücher--he was over seventy--could not resist a cavalry charge within an hour of midnight. Sir Charles Stewart, the British Minister at the headquarters of Frederick William III., thus records this desperately contested battle, the prelude to what is usually called the first Saxon Campaign: “A very brisk cannonade commenced the action on both sides. The villages of Gross and Klein Görschen were soon set on fire, and taken by the Allied troops, but not without loss. Heavy bodies of cavalry were sent to the left to prevent the enemy from turning that flank; and the Allied troops were frequently drawn within the enemy’s fire without producing the effect their exertions merited. The villages alluded to, when taken, afforded no solid advantages, as the enemy were equally strongly posted, barricaded, and entrenched in adjoining ones.