NARRATIVE, &c.
You know, my dear friend, how often I have expressed the inconsiderate wish to have some time or other an opportunity of witnessing a general engagement. This wish has now been accomplished, and in such a way as had well nigh proved fatal to myself; for my life had like to have been forfeited to my curiosity. I may boast, however, with perfect truth, that, during the four most tremendous days, I was wholly unaffected by that alarm and terror which had seized all around me. On those four days I was a near and undisturbed observer of a conflict which can scarcely be paralleled In the annals of the world: a conflict distinguished by a character which raises it far above your ordinary every-day battles. Its consequences will extend not to Europe only, but to regions separated from it by vast oceans. You must not expect from me a narrative that will enter into military details, but merely a faithful historical picture of what fell under my own observation; of what my own eyes, assisted by an excellent telescope, could discover from one of the highest buildings in the city, in the centre of operations, in the midst of a circumference of more than eighteen leagues; and what I saw and heard while venturing, at the hazard of my life, out of the city, not indeed up to the mouths of the infernal volcanoes, but close in the rear of the French lines, into the horrible bustle and tumult of the baggage-waggons and bivouacs. We were here exactly in the middle of the immense magic circle, where the incantations thundered forth from upwards of fifteen hundred engines of destruction annihilated many thousands, in order to produce a new creation. It was the conflict of the Titans against Olympus. It is unparalleled in regard to the commanders, great part of whom knew nothing of defeat but from the discomfiture of their opponents, and among whom were three emperors, a king, and the heir-apparent to a throne;—it is unparalleled in regard to the form, for it was fought in a circle which embraced more than fifteen miles;—it is unparalleled in regard to the prodigious armies engaged, for almost half a million of warriors out of every region of Europe and Asia, from the mouth of the Tajo to the Caucasus, with near two thousand pieces of cannon, were arrayed against one another;—it is unparalleled in regard to its duration, for it lasted almost one hundred hours;—it is unparalleled in regard to the plan so profoundly combined and so maturely digested by the allies, and characterized by an unity, which, in a gigantic mass, composed of such, multifarious parts, would have been previously deemed impossible;—it is unparalleled also in regard to its consequences, the full extent of which time alone can develop, and the first of which, the dissolution of the confederation of the Rhine, the overthrow of the Continental system, and the deliverance of Germany, are already before our eyes:—finally, it is unparalleled in regard to single extraordinary events, the most remarkable of which is, that the majority of the allies of the grand army, who had fought under the banners of France in so many engagements with exemplary valour and obstinacy, in the midst of this conflict, as if wakened by an electric shock, went over in large bodies, with their drums beating and with all their artillery, to the hostile legions, and immediately turned their arms against their former associates. The annals of modern warfare exhibit no examples of such a phenomenon, except upon the most contracted scale. You may possibly object, that in all this there is some exaggeration; and that, if I rate the battle of Leipzig so highly, it is only because I happened to be an eye-witness of it myself; that the French army is by no means annihilated; that in the uncommon talents of its leader it possesses a sure pledge that it will regain from its enemies those laurels which on various occasions they have ravished from it for a moment. You may employ other arguments of a similar kind; but to these I boldly reply, that neither do I consider the French army as annihilated; that such a calamity could scarcely befall a force which in the month of May, after ten engagements, numbered not less than 400,000 men, and was conducted by a general who had already won near fifty battles: but this I maintain, that the mighty eagle, which proudly aspired to encompass the whole globe in his flight, has had his wings crippled at Leipzig to such a degree, that in future he will scarcely be inclined to venture beyond the inaccessible crags which he has chosen for his retreat. For my part, I cannot help considering the battle of Leipzig as the same (only on an enlarged scale) as that gained near this very spot 180 years ago, by the great Gustavus Adolphus. In this conflict it was certainly decided that Napoleon, so far from being able to sustain such another engagement in Germany, will not have it in his power to make any stand on the right bank of the Rhine, nor recover himself till secure with the relics of his dispirited army behind the bulwarks of his own frontier.
Four times had the sun pursued his course over the immense field of battle before the die of Fate decided its issue. The whole horizon was enveloped in clouds of smoke and vapours; every moment fresh columns of fire shot up from the circumjacent villages; in all points were seen the incessant flashes of the guns, whose deep thunders, horribly intermingled with continual volleys of small arms, which frequently seemed quite close to the gates of the city, shook the very ground. Add to this the importance of the question which was to be resolved in this murderous contest, and you may form a faint conception of the anxiety, the wishes, the hopes,—in a word, of the cruel suspense which pervaded every bosom in this city.
To enable you to pursue the train of events, as far as I was capable of informing myself respecting them, I will endeavour to relate them as they occurred. It was not till the arrival of marshal Marmont with his corps of the army in this neighbourhood that any idea of the probability of a general engagement at Leipzig began to be entertained. That circumstance happened in the beginning of October. These guests brought along with them every species of misery and distress, which daily increased in proportion as those hosts of destroyers kept gradually swelling into a large army. They were joined from time to time by several other corps; the city was nearly surrounded by bivouacs; and, gracious God! what proceedings! what havoc!—We had frequently been informed that all Saxony, from Lusatia to the Elbe, resembled one vast desert, where nothing was to be seen but towns laid waste and plundered, villages reduced to ashes, naked and famishing inhabitants;—that there was no appearance of any other living creature; nay, not even a trace of vegetation remaining. These accounts we naturally regarded as exaggerations, little imagining that in a short time we should have to give to our distant friends the same details of horror respecting our own vicinity. Too true it is that no nation has made such progress in the art of refinement, and is so ingenious in devising infernal torments, as that, which, under the name of allies and protectors, has made us so inexpressibly wretched. Ever since the battle of Lützen, Leipzig had been one of the principal resources of the grand French army, and they showed it no mercy. Numberless hospitals transformed it into one great infirmary; many thousands of troops, quartered in the habitations of the citizens, one prodigious corps de garde; and requisitions of meat, bread, rice, brandy, and other articles, one vast poor-house, where the indigent inhabitants were in danger of starving. But for this well-stored magazine, the great French army had long since been obliged to abandon the Elbe. No wonder then that this point should have been guarded with the utmost care. It required commissaries and inspectors, such as those who had the control over our store-houses and granaries, to complete the master-piece, to reduce that Leipzig, which had once patiently sustained, without being entirely exhausted, the burdens of a war that lasted seven years—to reduce it, I say, in six months, to so low an ebb, that even the opulent were in danger of perishing with hunger; that reputable citizens could no longer procure the coarsest fare; and that, though their hearts overflowed with pity and compassion, they were absolutely incapable of affording the slightest relief, not so much as a crust of bread, to the sick and wounded soldier. It is impossible to give you any idea of the dexterity and rapidity with which the French soldiers will so totally change the look of a village, a field, or a garden, that you shall not know it again, how well soever you may have been acquainted with it before. Such was the fate of Leipzig, and of the beautiful environs of our inner city-walls.
You must know that the bread and forage waggons of a great French army are destined merely, as they pass through the villages, to receive the stores collected from all the barns, cellars, lofts, and stables, which are taken by force from the wretched husbandman, who is beaten, cut, and mangled, till he puts-to his last horse, and till he carries his last sheaf of corn and his last loaf of bread to the next bivouac; and then he may think himself fortunate, if he is suffered to return home without horses or waggon, and is not compelled to accompany the depredators many miles without sustenance of any kind. In all other armies, whether Russians, Prussians, Austrians, or Swedes, when the troops are not drawn out in line of battle opposite to the enemy, in which case it is necessary to send back the carriages into the rear, care is always taken that waggons with bread and forage, and herds of cattle, shall follow the marching columns. Whenever the army halts, magazines are immediately established; and, if even the stores necessary for it are required at the cost of the country, this case bears no comparison with that where every attendant on the waggon-train is at full liberty to pillage till his rapacity is satisfied. Woe to the country where, as in our's, hundreds of thousands of such commissaries are allowed to exercise their destructive office at discretion! Ask the inhabitants of more than twenty villages round Leipzig, and many hundred others at a greater distance, which certainly fared no better, what soldiers they were who carried off roofs, doors, windows, floors, and every kind of household furniture and agricultural implements, and threw them like useless lumber into the watch-fires?—Ask those unfortunates what soldiers they were who pillaged barns and cellars, and ransacked every corner of the houses; who tore the scanty clothes from the backs of the poorest class; who broke open every box and chest, and who searched every dunghill, that nothing might escape them?—They will tell you that it was the so highly vaunted French guards, who always led the way, and were the instructors of their comrades.
It is a great misfortune for a country when, in time of war, the supply of the troops is left to themselves by the military authorities, and when that supply is calculated only from one day to another; but this calamity has no bounds when they are French troops who attack your stores. It is not enough for them to satisfy the calls of appetite; every article is an object of their rapacity: nothing whatever is left to the plundered victim. What they cannot cram into their knapsacks and cartouch-boxes is dashed in pieces and destroyed. Of the truth of this statement the environs of Leipzig might furnish a thousand proofs. The most fortunate of the inhabitants were those who in good time removed their stores and cattle to a place of safety, and left their houses to their fate. He who neglected this precaution, under the idea that the presence of the owner would be sufficient to restrain those locusts, of course lost his all. No sooner had he satisfied one party than another arrived to renew the demand; and thus they proceeded so long as a morsel or a drop was left in the house. When such a person had nothing more to give, he was treated with the utmost brutality, till at length, stripped of all, he was reluctantly compelled to abandon his home. If you should chance to find a horse or a cow, here and there, in the country round our city, imagine not that the animal was spared by French generosity:—no such thing! the owner must assuredly have concealed it in some hiding-place, where it escaped the prying eyes of the French soldiers. Nothing—absolutely nothing—was spared; the meanest bedstead of the meanest beggar was broken up as well as the most costly furniture from the apartments of the opulent. After they had slept upon the beds in the bivouacs, as they could not carry them away, they ripped them open, consigned the feathers to the winds, and sold the bed-clothes and ticking for a mere trifle. Neither the ox, nor the calf but two days old; neither the ewe, nor the lamb scarcely able to walk; neither the brood-hen, nor the tender chicken, was spared. All were carried off indiscriminately; whatever had life was slaughtered; and the fields were covered with calves, lambs, and poultry, which the troops were unable to consume. The cattle collected from far and near were driven along in immense herds with the baggage. Their cries for food in all the high roads were truly pitiable. Often did one of those wretches drive away several cows from the out-house of a little farmer, who in vain implored him upon his knees to spare his only means of subsistence, merely to sell them before his face for a most disproportionate price. Hay, oats, and every species of corn, were thrown unthreshed upon the ground, where they were consumed by the horses, or mostly trampled in the dirt; and if these animals had stood for some days in the stable, and been supplied with forage by the peasant, the rider had frequently the impudence to require his host to pay for the dung. Woe to the field of cabbages, turnips, or potatoes, that happened to lie near a bivouac! It was covered in a trice with men and cattle, and in twenty-four hours there was not a plant to be seen. Fruit-trees were cut down and used for fuel, or in the erection of sheds, which were left perhaps as soon as they were finished. Though Saxony is one of the richest and most fertile provinces of Germany, and the vicinity of Leipzig has been remarkable for abundance, yet it cannot appear surprising, that, with such wanton waste, famine, the most dangerous foe to an army, should have at length found its way into all the French camps. Barns, stables, and lofts, were emptied; the fields were laid bare; and the inhabitants fled into the woods and the towns. Bread and other provisions had not been seen in our markets for several days, and thus it was now our turn to endure the pressure of hunger. It was a fortunate circumstance that many families had laid in a quantity of potatoes, which indeed might yet be purchased, though at an exorbitant price. The bakers of this place were obliged to work up the small stock of flour in their possession for the use of the troops; and all other persons were driven from the doors by the guards with the butt-ends of their muskets; though the citizen who came in quest of bread had perhaps twenty men quartered upon him, who all expected him to find wherewith to satisfy their craving appetites.
Such was what might be termed the prologue to the grand tragedy which was about to be performed in an amphitheatre of many square miles, and to the catastrophe of which we looked forward with an anxiety that had risen to so high a pitch, because, in case of the longer continuance of this state of things, our own annihilation might be hourly expected. That the grand armies of the allies were approaching Leipzig, on every side, we had heard through several private channels. Napoleon had quitted Dresden, which he had been compelled to abandon almost solely by the want of all the means of subsistence. We were long uncertain respecting his route, and so perhaps was he himself at first. Many, who were qualified to form a judgment respecting military operation's, were of opinion that he would make a push with his whole force upon Berlin and the Oder. They supposed that those parts were not sufficiently covered, and considered the fortresses on the Elbe as his point d'appui in the rear. This opinion, however, seemed to lose much of its probability, as other French corps, under Ney, Regnier, Bertrand, and Marmont, kept arriving here, and were afterwards joined by that of Augereau. We had received authentic information that prince Schwarzenberg had already advanced to Altenburg with the grand combined army of Austria, Russia, and Prussia; and also that the crown-prince of Sweden had his head-quarters at Zörbig. Upon the whole, however, our intelligence was unsatisfactory. For several days (that is to say, from the 10th) it was reported that the emperor of the French would certainly remove his head-quarters hither; that he had taken the road to Wurzen, and was coming by way of Duben. This account was confirmed by several detachments of the French guard. It is universally known that this general preferably chooses those days on which he founds his claim to glory, in order to distinguish them by new achievements. His proximity to us, and the approaching 14th of October[2], strengthened the anticipation of some important event in our neighbourhood. The light troops of the allies, whom we took for the advanced guard of the crown-prince of Sweden, were distinctly to be seen from the steeples of the city, on the north side of it, towards Breitenfeld and Lindenthal. Daily skirmishes ensued, and wounded French were hourly brought in. The bustle in the city increased; the king of Naples had arrived, and fixed his head-quarters at Konnewitz. Innumerable generals and staff-officers filled all the houses. Not a moment's rest was to be had; all were in bivouac. They seemed wholly ignorant of the motions of the allies; for the same troops who went out at one gate often returned before night at another; so that there was an incessant marching in and out at all the four principal avenues of the city. These movements of cavalry, infantry, and carriages, ceased not a moment even during the night It was very rarely that a troop of cavalry, sent out upon patrol or picket duty, returned without having lost several men and horses, who were invariably, according to their report, kidnapped by the Cossacks. Upon the whole, all the troops with whom the French had any rencounters were called by them Cossacks—a name which I have heard them repeat millions of times, and to which they never failed to add, that "the fellows had again set up a devilish hurrah."
The Cossacks are indisputably the troops of whom the French are most afraid. With them, therefore, all the light cavalry who come upon them unawares are sure to be Cossacks. In revenge for the many annoyances which they were incessantly suffering from these men, they applied to them the opprobrious epithet of brigands. Often did I take pains to convince them that troops who were serving their legitimate sovereign, and fighting under the conduct of their officers, could not be termed banditti; my representations had no effect,—they were determined to have some satisfaction for their disappointment in a thousand attempts to master such enemies. Their vanity was far too great to suffer them to do justice to those warriors; and they never would admit what thousands had witnessed, namely, that thirty French horse had frequently run away from two Cossacks. If Napoleon had twenty thousand Russian Cossacks in his service, the French journalists and editors of newspapers would scarcely be able to find terms strong enough to extol these troops; and the French have just reason to rejoice that the emperor Alexander has no such rivals of their government in his pay, otherwise we should hear of their exploits only, and the vaunted French horse-guards would long since have sunk into oblivion.
All the preparations that were making now evidently denoted that we were on the eve of important events. The French corps had already ranged themselves in a vast semicircle, extending from north to east, and thence to south-west. The country towards Merseburg and Weissenfels seemed to be merely observed. For this purpose the eminences beyond the village of Lindenau were occupied. Here the access to the city is the most difficult, a causeway only leading to it in this direction. The country on the right and left consists of swampy meadows and wood-land, every where intersected by ditches and muddy streams. If you inquired of the French officers what might be the total strength of their army about Leipzig, their statements were so various, that it was impossible to fix with the least confidence upon any number as a medium. By what standard, indeed, can you judge of a force rated by some at 150,000, by others at 400,000 men? They unanimously agreed, on the other hand, that the allies would be opposed by fifteen corps, exclusively of the guards. I had an opportunity of forming a tolerably correct estimate of one division of Marmont's corps, which consisted at the utmost of 4000, so that the whole might amount to 12,000 men; and it was one of those which, in comparison of others, had sustained the least loss. Even that of Augereau, which was incontestably the most complete, as it had just come out of cantonments, was computed at scarcely 15,000 men. If, then, we take 10,000 for the average, the total amount of the French armies collected near Leipzig, as the wrecks only of several were then remaining, can scarcely have reached 170,000, even including the guards. Such a force, however, commanded by so many generals who had heretofore been acknowledged the ablest in Europe, together with wore than 600 pieces of artillery, was still fully sufficient to make itself respected, and even feared, by an enemy of double its number. One single species of troops alone was below mediocrity:—the cavalry, both in regard to the horses and the men, the former from weakness and want of sustenance, and the latter from ignorance of their business. With the force of the allies we are yet unacquainted, but at all events they must have been more numerous.