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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 in any way against adversity? In 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 a ruler appear.

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 force, 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

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horses, foot-soldiers, and campfollowers, 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 wretched 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 force was 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 storey 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. at an end.

Yet the game was not 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 defeat. 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 obtained. Napoleon preferred that thousands and thousands of his

troops should perish by the sword, by famine, and afterwards by pestilence, rather than that he should avert useless destruction by composition with his foe. But he did not in the least retrieve his position after this day of Leipzig; he merely drew the war on to the soil of France instead of Germany, wore out a few months in unsuccessful defence of his capital, and then surrendered not only his arms but his crown. The days of Leipzig were the days of Fate.

His personal courage, however, is very distinctly witnessed by the records of these events. It does not seem as if he courted, or defied, or despised danger in the chivalrous sense, so much as that his mind was so absorbed in the direction of his battles that he had no place in it for apprehensions about himself. Constantly we read of him standing in situations where his staff and others were being destroyed close to him, and where shot and shell were falling profusely about; while he, surveying and contemplating the fortunes of the field, was absolutely insensible to what was passing at his elbow. At Hanau, while he was giving some directions, a shell fell quite close to him. He paid no attention to it, and no one dared to interrupt his speech; but those about him hardly breathed while they awaited the explosion. The missile penetrated so far into the ground that its bursting was harmless. Napoleon does not seem to have been aware that there ever had been any danger. At the passage of the Elbe, when a ball struck some wood close to him, and sent a splinter on to his neck, he so far recognised the danger as to say, "If it had struck me on the breast, all had been over." When he was suddenly recalled to Dresden by the unexpected attack of the Allies,

VOL. CXX.-NO. DCCXXIX.

their fire was very hot over a space which he had to pass, and he crawled along there on his hands and knees, but never thought of waiting, or of seeking another path. Nobody has ever given a reason why fortune should constantly favour these strong adventurous men; nor why they should be aware, as they seem to be, that they are proof against accidents that may come to other men. Force of will and physical vigour might be urged as the causes of the men's temerity; but strength of will or of body cannot keep off the strokes of shot and shell!

Most of those who have roamed over the vast theatre of his German defeat, and mused on his fortunes and character, will spend some time before Napoleon's portrait by Delaroche in the Museum. The momentous act of his life-drama which was begun at Leipzig ended at Fontainebleau ; and, as we look at the fallen hero, the baffled politician, the conqueror who was to conquer no more, we ascertain the goal of his infatuation, and recognise the answer of Providence to one who had said, "Tush! God hath forgotten." All is past; all is lost; empire is vanishing away; and the fixed gaze peering into space, and daring to regard neither the past nor the future, offers a terrible lesson. Not a scintilla of comfort derived from honour saved, or duty done, is to be traced in the expression. The glory had departed, and with it had gone all that could lift up the soul. That look of blank despair tells that nothing is left!

On being cleared of its invaders, Leipzig presented a series of scenes as horrible as the mind can conceive. Heaps upon heaps of dead and dying lay all round and all through it, some of them nearly filling the Frankfurter Strasse up

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to the fatal bridge. The sick and wounded amounted to nearly forty thousand, besides an enormous number of unwounded prisoners. The resources of the town were utterly exhausted, so that one sees that these wretches who could not get away had but a miserable prospect; yet no anticipation of their misery could correctly foreshadow the event. It is certain that of the innumerable sick and wounded none had bed or shirt; and that a very large number had not even protection from the weather, but lay in sheds, on dunghills, and in the streets. Fifty-six hospitals were improvised, but these afforded scarce more than shelter from the weather. Medical attendance, appliances, or stores, were procurable in quantity altogether inadequate to the requirements of the occasion. Where the wounded were fortunate enough to find cover, they are described as packed together like herrings in a barrel, and lying in the blood-stained rags in which they were brought in from the field. Of course mortification, lock-jaw, and other horrors overtook the mutilated. Rough shingles were used for splints, and it is known that amputations were in many cases performed by persons who knew nothing of surgery. The town had been left so destitute of provision of food that it was impossible to feed the immense hosts that were left in it helpless; and it is a horrible truth that French soldiers were seen grubbing in the dirt-heaps for bones and apple or vegetable parings. In some parts of the town birds and dogs fed on human bodies. To crown all this, a pestilence, as might have been expected, broke out, and afflicted the peaceful inhabitants as well as the soldiers.

shelter for the sick, prisoners could not hope to fare very well. These were thrust into any place, no matter how noisome, where they could be secure. Many of them were stowed in the cemeteries, in the vaults with the dead, whose coffins they burned to keep themselves from perishing of cold. The scenes and the suffering were altogether as dreadful and shocking as can be conceived. "It is well," says one of the German writers who recount these things, "that our children should learn with

what suffering their freedom has been bought."

It is a relief to turn from the recital or perusal of these horrors to the present aspect of the town and country where they were enacted. Spring is budding; the trees are alive with birds; and where the skaters were lately busy, you have dancing shadows and sparkling fountains. As warmth and sunshine gladden the sober industrious region, and the ploughman, in full security of his reward in autumn, begins his patient labour, the scenes are suggestive of only hope and peace. The small birds, not hunted and persecuted as they are elsewhere, skim across your path, or pursue their fancies, whatever they may be-the old ones foraging, the young trying their pinions, almost within your grasp, so little terror have they of humankind. Their tameness does not arise, like that of Alexander Selkirk's friends, from unacquaintance with man, but from long experience that man is not their enemy. German boys are not given to torturing and putting to death in a wanton way. If they go about in spring and summer equipped with fly-nets and canisters like candleboxes for the capture of insects, Where it was so hard to find this is allowed in the interest of

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