"The battle is approaching! the fight is coming on!"
Sergeant Pinto declared that he felt the Emperor in the air. I felt nothing, but I knew that we were marching on Leipzig, and I thought to myself, "If we have a battle, God grant that you do not get an ugly hurt as at Lutzen, and that you may see Catharine again!" The night following the weather cleared up a little, thousands of stars shone out, and we still kept on. The next day, about ten o'clock, near a village whose name I cannot recollect, we were ordered to halt, and then we felt a trembling in the air. The colonel and Sergeant Pinto said:
"The battle has begun!" and at the same moment, the colonel, waving his sword, cried: "Forward!"
We started at a run; knapsacks, cartouche-boxes, muskets, mud, all drove on; we cared for nothing. Half an hour after we saw, a few thousand paces ahead, a long column, in which followed artillery, cavalry, and infantry, one after the other; behind us, on the road to Duben, we saw another, all pushing forward at their utmost speed. Regiments even advancing at the double quick across the fields.
At the end of the road we could see the two spires of the churches of Saint Nicholas and Saint Thomas in Leipzig, piercing the sky, while to the right and left, on both sides of the city, rose great clouds of smoke through which broad flashes were darting. The noise increased; we were yet more than a league from the city, but we were forced to almost shout to hear each other, and men gazed around, pale as death, seeming by their looks to say:
"This is indeed a battle?"
Sergeant Pinto cried that it was worse than Eylau. He laughed no more, nor did Zébédé; but on, on we rushed, officers incessantly urging us forward. We seemed to grow delirious; the love of country was indeed striving within us, but still greater was the furious eagerness for the fight.
At eleven o'clock we descried the battle-field about a league in front of Leipzig. We saw the steeples and roofs crowded with people, and the old ramparts on which I had walked so often, thinking of Catharine. Opposite us, twelve or fifteen hundred yards distant, two regiments of red lancers were drawn up, and a little to the left, two or three regiments of mounted chasseurs in the fields along the Partha, and between them filed the long column from Duben. Farther on, along the slope, were the divisions Ricard, Dombrowski, Souham, and several others, with their rear to the city; cannons limbered, with their caissons—the cannoneers and artillerymen on horseback—stood ready to start off; and far behind, on a hill, around one of those old farmhouses with flat roofs and immense outlying sheds, so often seen in that country, glittered the brilliant uniforms of the staff.
It was the army of reserve, commanded by Ney. His left wing communicated with Marmont, who was posted on the road to Halle, and his right with the grand army, commanded by the Emperor in person. In this manner our troops formed an immense circle around Leipzig; and the enemy, arriving from all points, sought to join their divisions so as to form a yet larger circle around us, and to inclose us in Leipzig as in a trap.
While we waited thus, three fearful battles were going on at once: one against the Austrians and Russians at Wachau; another against the Prussians at Mockern on the road to Halle; and the third on the road to Lutzen, to defend the bridge of Lindenau, attacked by General Giulay.