At nightfall he gave the order to fall back, leaving the environs of Leipzig strewed with dead and dying; but his order was tardily executed, as all the French fugitives with their baggage, cannon, and wounded, on horseback, on foot, or in waggons, were compelled to take one road, every other being occupied by the cavalry and horse artillery of the victors; consequently, the sufferings and slaughter of the French, even after the field was lost, became dreadful. Napoleon, before retiring, had ordered that the bridge of the White Elster should be undermined, and directed Macdonald and Prince Joseph Poniatowski, with their divisions, to defend a portion of the suburbs that lay between the advancing enemy and the Borna road; and to leave nothing undone to maintain their post to the last, that the retreat of the army and baggage might be fully covered.
Poniatowski was brave as a lion. He was nephew of Stanislaus Augustus, the last King of Poland, and was animated alike by the purest patriotism and hatred of the Russians; hence he served France against them as the oppressors of his house and native country. He had 2000 Polish infantry and a few horse with him; and seeing the desperation of affairs, as the waggons of wounded, dripping with blood, the heavy artillery with their tumbrils, and the masses of fugitive soldiery exhausted by three days of fighting and excitement, pressed in close ranks across the bridge of the Elster, he drew his sabre and turning to his countrymen—
"Gentlemen," said he, "here we must win or lose our honour!—Forward!" and at the head of a few Polish cuirassiers he made a rush towards the enemy. At that moment the bridge of the Elster was blown up, and his retreat cut off for ever!
Macdonald was similarly circumstanced, as his troops had manned and enfiladed the suburbs, where they were firing briskly to keep the foe in check from walls, houses, and hedgerows.
According to the Moniteur, it was the intention of Napoleon to have the bridge blown up only at the last moment, and when all his troops had passed the stream. General Dussaussoy had remitted this duty to Colonel Montfort, who, in turn, had remitted it to a corporal and four sappers. On the first appearance of the enemy upon the road, and when the cuirassiers of Poniatowski charged, the startled corporal fired the train, and a dark cloud of dust and stones ascending into the air with a mighty roar, announced the destruction of the bridge; while Macdonald and his whole corps, with eighty pieces of cannon, all their eagles, and several hundred carriages laden with powder, baggage, and wounded men, were on the wrong side of the river. A shout of astonishment and dismay arose from those who had crossed; and many an anxious eye was turned back to Leipzig, where the roar of musketry was yet heard in the rear.
The attention of Napoleon, who had left the city by the road which led by the bridge to Lindenau (the direct route for France) was arrested by the explosion, and one of his aides-de-camp exclaimed,
"Sire—sire—they have blown up the bridge of the Elster, and Macdonald's corps is yet in Leipzig!"
"At that time," to quote Bourienne, "Napoleon was accused of having given orders for the destruction of the bridge, immediately after his own passage, to secure his retreat from the active pursuit of the enemy. The English journals were unanimous on this point, and there were few of the inhabitants of Leipzig who doubted the fact."
If this be true, it was a baseness only equalled by the strangulation of Pichegreu, the torture of Captain Wright in the Temple, and the lonely butchery of the hapless Duc d'Enghien.