Napoleon was not generally over-credulous, but this mistake was probably engendered in his mind by the steady stream of uneasy reports he was receiving from his own generals. On the twenty-third he wrote to Maret that his division commanders seemed to have no self-reliance except in his presence; "the enemy's strength seems great to them wherever I am not." Marmont was the chief offender, having severely criticized a plan of operations which would require one or more of the marshals to act independently in Brandenburg or Silesia or both, expressing the fear that on the day when the Emperor believed himself to have won a decisive battle he would discover that he had lost two. Seventeen years of campaigning had apparently turned the great generals of Napoleon's army into puppets, capable of acting only on their leader's impulse. Whatever the cause, Napoleon was set in his idea, and pressed on in pursuit. On the twenty-second Bluecher was beyond the Katzbach, with the French van close behind, when word arrived at Napoleon's headquarters that the Austro-Russians had entered Saxony and were menacing Dresden. How alert and sane the Emperor was, how thoroughly he foresaw every contingency, appears from the minute directions he wrote for Macdonald, who was left to block the road for Bluecher into Saxony, while Lauriston was to outflank and shut off the perfervid veteran from both Berlin and Zittau. These instructions having been written, Napoleon at first contemplated crossing the Elbe above Dresden to take Schwarzenberg on the flank and rear in the passes of the Ore Mountains. This would not only cut off the Austrian general from the Saxon capital, but prevent his swerving to the left for an advance on Leipsic. But finding that his enemy was moving swiftly, the Emperor resolved to meet him before Dresden. It would never do to lose his ally's capital at the outset, or to suffer defeat at the very head of his defensive line. Giving orders, therefore, for the corps of Marmont, Vandamme, and Victor, together with Latour-Maubourg's cavalry and the guard, to wheel, he hastened back to reinforce Saint-Cyr at Dresden. On the twenty-fifth, as he passed Bautzen, he learned that Oudinot had been defeated at Luckau; but he gave no heed to the report, and next day reached Dresden at nine in the morning. An hour later the guard came up, having performed the almost incredible feat of marching seventy-six miles in three days. Vandamme, with forty thousand men, had arrived at Pirna, a few miles above, and Saint-Cyr was drawing in behind the temporary fortifications of the city itself.