The thought that he might for a time be cut off from France troubled him not: "400,000 men," he said, "resting on a system of strongholds, on a river like the Elbe, are not to be turned." In truth, he thought little about the Bohemian army.

If 40,000 Russians had entered Bohemia, they would not reach Prague till the 25th; so he wrote to St.Cyr On the 17th, the day when hostilities could first begin; and he evidently believed that Dresden would be safe till September.

Its defence seemed assured by the skill of that master of defensive warfare, St.Cyr, by the barrier of the Erz Mountains, and still more by Austrian slowness.
Of this characteristic of theirs he cherished great hopes.

Their finances were in dire disorder; and Fouche, who had just returned from a tour in the Hapsburg States, reported that the best way of striking at that Power would be "to affect its paper currency, on which all its armaments depend."[346] And truly if the transport of a great army over a mountain range had depended solely on the almost bankrupt exchequer at Vienna, Dresden would have been safe until Michaelmas; but, beside the material aid brought by the Russians and Prussians into Bohemia, England also gave her financial support.

In pursuance of the secret article agreed on at Reichenbach, Cathcart now advanced L250,000 at once; and the knowledge that our financial support was given to the federative paper notes issued by the allies enabled the Court of Vienna privately to raise loans and to wage war with a vigour wholly unexpected by Napoleon.[347] Certainly the allied Grand Army suffered from no lack of advisers.