his choice!

The main armies did not engage on the 17th; and one may suppose, not unreasonably, that both sides were willing enough to take a little breathing-time after their exertiors of the day before. The reasons respectively assigned for the pause are, on the part of the French Emperor, that he hoped for an answer to proposals which he had made to Austria the night before, tempting her to withdraw from the alliance; on the part of the Allies, that their reinforcements, whch they knew to be at hand, did not come up till afternoon of the 17th, when it was too late to begin fighting. There was a severe cavalry combat away to the north-east on the 17th; but, except for this, it was a day of comparative rest. Napoleon used it to distribute his troops in a fresh position. He contracted his arc of defence, drawing his forces nearer to Leipzig, and made all the preparation in his power for the mortal agony of the 18th. Probstheida, which had before been his own station in 'rear of his army, he now made his most advanced point of defence. His right, still resting on the river, was at Connewitz; but his left was able to stretch further north than before, being formed on the circumference of a smaller circle. Thus he covered Leipzig and his only way of retreat more effectually. His own station with his reserves was at the tobaccomill on the Thonberg. It is now marked by a pillar, the mill having been removed. He had yielded two miles of ground in thus changing

close to the suburbs. Such a din of battle, such a pounding of firearms as Leipzig heard next day, had never been heard in the world before. A spectator inside it-let him look which way he might from a steeple, monument, or point of vantage-saw embattled hosts in deadly strife. From nine in the morning until the fall of night the carnage continued. The whole of Napoleon's action in this encounter may be described as vainly beating himself to pieces against a foe as obstinate and as wary as himself, and in far better fighting trim than he was. In vain he launched his masses of men on point after point of the enemy's line, endeavouring to break it. yielded rather than gained ground; and the firmness and superiority of the Allies were so marked, that the Saxons and Würtemburgers who, against their inclinations, had been combating on the French side, went over on the field to the other, and turned their arms against him.

He

After a time it became so certain that the day must end in the retreat, or attempted retreat, of the French, that Schwarzenburg, the generalissimo of the Allied forces, got his men on the great field south-east of Leipzig as much as possible into shelter, protecting them by a furious and most powerful cannonade. The fire of the guns was sufficient to baffle the desperate attacks which Napoleon still persisted in making, for the Allied artillery was now superior to his both in numbers and position. And he was soon obliged to direct his attention to a part of the field farther north, where his troops were being forced back almost to the gates of Leipzig. Though the fighting was most desperate in this northern direction, nothing that the French Emperor could do sufficed to check the enemy; and when night fell, his position had become quite un

tenable, and there was nothing for it but to move off as fast and in as good order as he could.

Do you remember that, consulting with his generals on the field after nightfall, the exhausted Emperor fell asleep in his chair, and, on waking up after a few minutes, had lost all recollection of where he was and of what had happened? I cannot find out exactly where this council was held, but think it merits a stone to mark it as well as any spot on the field. These few moments of insensibility were all the sleep he got that night he hurried back to the town at eight o'clock, and was occupied till morning in ascertaining the state of his army and in arranging for the continuance of the retreat, and its protection by a rear-guard. It was not his way to acknowledge deficiency on his own part; but I fancy that he must have felt very keenly how the misery in which he and his were now sunk was owing to his own obstinacy and the castles in the air which he had allowed himself to dote upon. Where was now his hope of chastising Prussia, for which he had sacrificed every dictate of prudence? Where was his cherished prestige, relying on which he had declined and neglected to provide any way against adversity? what a condition was his empire, put together with so much blood and treasure! already falling to pieces, and that which was nominally subject territory not even affording him a safe and unmolested passage back to France! The more I reflect on the condition to which he had now brought himself, the more damaged does his character as a general and ruler appear.

In

The battles of the 16th and 18th were remarkable for hard fighting rather than for brilliant strokes of generalship. Both leaders had disposed their forces advantageously, and both were prompt at bringing

up supports to a disputed point. Wherever a ground of vantage was contended for, thither did each commander accumulate masses of men until the action ceased in that direction, not so much because any marked advantage had been gained as because human effort in that quarter could do no more. The Allies were superior in artillery and cavalry, and the Cossacks, in the course of the 18th, succeeded in overlapping and threatening Napoleon's left flank; but it was on the north, where the Allies had been largely reinforced since the 16th, that the principal impression was made and the French were driven into the suburbs in such sort, that but for the coming of night it might have been hard to secure the town and the line of retreat. Napoleon watched, as of old, for some mistake or some omission on his enemy's part, which might enable him to deliver one of his masterstrokes and thus to secure the victory; but he watched in vain.

Before he fought the battle of Leipzig Napoleon must have known that the greatest advantage he could reasonably hope for from fighting was an undisturbed retreat to France. In case of his not being able to deliver a severe check to the Allies he would of course still have to retreat, but amid circumstances not much more favourable than those which attended his retreat from Russia the year before. Any facility, therefore, which by the skill of his engineers and the exertions of his troops could have been provided for a rapid exodus from Leipzig should have been sought after by him with the utmost earnestness. But it is a truth, never explained, that to the very last he persisted in refusing attention to his line of retreat. When pressed by his generals and staff, he sent Bertrand to keep open the one

road to Weissenfels; but beyond this he did nothing. In the marshes to the westward of Leipzig the rivers Pleisse and Elster, often separating and reuniting, run in several channels. The great road crosses several of these channels Over bridges; but for a long way north and south of this great road there was in those days no bridge. To make temporary bridges at other points was therefore an obvious necessity if an immense force were to be moved rapidly from the city towards the Rhine. But no representation could induce the Emperor to give attention to this important matter. He might have made bridges before the battle began; he might have made them on the 17th October, which intervened between the two terrible days of fighting; he might even have made them on the night between the 18th and 19th, but he did not. His mind seemed to turn with some unconquerable aversion from this disagreeable duty-among many proofs a most glaring one that his capacity was no longer of that uniform excellence which it once had been. Thus, when the inevitable retreat was ordered, the whole of his immense sorce, with artillery and baggage, had to depart by one narrow street, the Frankfurter Strasse, which led over the bridges, and so on by the great highway to Lindenau.

If you stood in the Frankfurter Strasse, my dear Editor, you would soon perceive that, such a host pressing into it, a jam could hardly be avoided by any regulation or arrangement; and, if you considered that, while the French were pushing through it, a victorious enemy was forcing his way into the town behind them, you would quite realise the dire confusion which entangled everything in that outpouring. Guns, carriages, cavalry

the

horses, foot-soldiers, and followers, all struggling along together; narrow bridges in front over which no more than one carriage could pass at a time; an almost endless crowd in rear pressing on with frantic energy. Very soon the parallel and cross streets must have been choked with them too. Then fancy the Allied forces charging into this helpless mass, or mowing them down with case-shot wherever a view of them could be got! Scarcely could soldiers be in a more miserable plight. If the streams had been bridged on ten lines the French army could not have escaped without heavy loss; but when all had to pass by one series of narrow bridges, what a problem was presented! No leader was ever guilty of more unpardonable neglect than Napoleon in this matter. As long as the rear-guard could keep the assailants at bay, the foremost corps continued to hurry across streams; but it was soon apparent that if any more could get away with their lives for a prey, as the Scripture expresses it, that was as much as could be effected: no more vehicles could pass. So the wretened beings set fire to their waggons and essayed to flee unencumbered. Then when all attempt at resistance was relinquished, and the only remaining hope of evading the enemy was in the speed of their flight, occurred the dreadful catastrophe with which Cruickshank's pencil made my infant eyes familiar. ~ One of the bridges, whose demolition. had been designed to arrest the enemy's pursuit, was, by a blunder, prematurely blown up. This was the incident which crowned the disaster. The small semblance of discipline or order which had remained up to this period was now dissolved. The men rushed into the dark waters, and, being unable to combat the stream, or sinking

in the deep mud of its bed, were drowned in numbers. The enemy in great forcew as on their flanks and rear, and the only alternatives were death or surrender. Another great French army was ruined; and but a few shattered remains of it were on their way back to tell the tale of woe.

The modern bridge does not, I imagine, bestride exactly the same space as did this bridge of fate. But close to it there is a pillar commemorating the demolition. The span of it is very moderate; indeed, as you stand looking at it you fancy it does not very much exceed some of the longest jumps that you now and then hear of. It happens too, sometimes, that the river has shrunk to a scanty stream, and looks of such a moderate depth that it could hardly present much difficulty to determined men essaying to cross. Everything, however, seems to have conspired on this fatal 19th October 1813 to make the wreck of the French army complete. A deep flood was rolling between the steep and slippery banks, and the river must have been full for some days, from the depth of mud which is reported.

Among the few who escaped after the explosion was Marshal Macdonald, who boldly swam his horse across; and among the drowned was the, brave Poniatowski, who also tried to cross the channel on horseback, but slipped back on attempting to climb the farther bank. His body, having been found and recognised, was carried to a room in the basement story of the Rath-haus to await burial, which it received with great solemnity and honour from the Allied sovereigns. It did not, however, remain long in Leipzig, but was exhumed and carried to Warsaw, where it was again entombed. Finally, in 1816, it was, by permission of the Emperor Alexander, awarded a resting-place at

Cracow among the kings and heroes of Poland. I have in vain endeavoured to discover the grave in which it temporarily rested in Leipzig; and I am not astonished that there is no record of this particular grave, seeing that within and without the walls there must have been pits and trenches open, into which the dead were being put from morning till night.

This retreat of Napoleon's back to France, across Germany, seems on a careless view to contradict a wellknown maxim of war, which affirms that a general whose communications with his base are interrupted, while at the same time he is confronted or followed by a superior force whose communications are complete, is checkmated. The Emperor had undoubtedly been severely beaten at Leipzig: on his rear and on his flank were his victorious enemies; except some magazines at Erfurth, which lay on his route, he had nothing to fall back on; and the Bavarians, in force between him and the Rhine, were waiting to bar his passage. Yet the game was not at an end. He made a retreat, such as it was, to France, and brought a small number of famished and diseased wretches to languish in the fortresses on the Rhine. But I believe his condition, if surveyed carefully, was checkmate. It must be remembered, I am told, that a general, at whatever disadvantage he may lie, has it always in his power to refuse to lay down his arms, and to endeavour to cut his way through his enemies, preferring suffering and death to the acknowledgment of defcat. The maxim which I mentioned above is framed on the supposition that, where the situation is desperate, common humanity will dictate submission on the best terms that can be ob

tained. Napoleon preferred that thousands and thousands of his