Finding all lost, and that his retreat was cut off, Macdonald sheathed his sword, and calling on his soldiers to escape as they best could, threw himself into the river, the waters of which were darkening as the night drew on. He swam across, and reached the other side in safety. Poor Poniatowski, though bleeding and severely wounded, imitated his example; but he was pierced by a bullet, from one of the enemy's skirmishers, who had now lined the steep bank of the Elster, and opened a murderous fire upon the mass of unfortunate fugitives, the wreck of Macdonald's corps, who were struggling in the stream. In the dark, the unfortunate prince was swept away with his charger and drowned. Five days after, his corpse was found by a fisherman, and interred on the bank of the stream. A granite sarcophagus, surrounded by acacias and weeping-willows, marks the place where he lies.
Colonel Montfort, the corporal, and the four sappers, were delivered over to a court-martial.
Such was the closing episode of that terrible day at Leipzig, the anniversary of the more glorious events of Ulm and of Jena—a day that cost France nearly forty thousand men.
Napoleon continued his retreat to Mayence, with an army exhausted by toil, crushed by defeat, and savage in spirit, but lacking the stamina to make one more vigorous stand for France, save at Hanau; for French soldiers, more than any other, are the worst to retrieve a disaster.
"The defensive system," to quote the Memoirs of Marshal Ney, "accords ill with the disposition of the French soldier, at least if it is not to be maintained by successive diversions and excursions; in a word, if you are not constantly occupied in that little warfare, inactivity destroys the force of troops who rest continually on the defensive. They are obliged to be constantly on the alert night and day; while, on the other hand, offensive expeditions wisely combined raise the spirit of the soldier, and prevent him from having time to ponder on the real cause of his dangerous situation. It is in the offensive that you find the French soldier inexhaustible in resources. His active disposition and valour in assaults double his power. A general should never hesitate to march with the bayonet against an enemy, if the ground is favourable for the use of that weapon. It is in the attack, in fine, that you accustom the French soldier to every species of warfare—alike to brave the enemy's fire, and to leave the field open to the development of his intelligence and courage."
But now the spirit of the French soldiers was almost dead for a time; and so ill was this retreat conducted, that the rear-guard, with 20,000 sick and wounded, fell into the hands of the enemy.
Macdonald was at the battle of Hanau, the last stand made by this discomfited host in Hesse Cassel. There the French were attacked by the Austrians and Bavarians, whom they routed, and then continued retreating, the whole of their cavalry hewing a passage, sword in hand, through the lines of the enemy.
He was now despatched by the Emperor to Cologne, with orders to organize a new army. These instructions he found the impossibility of fulfilling, so he abandoned the Rhine, along the banks of which the bayonets of the allies were glittering everywhere, and falling back into the interior of ancient France, with the war-worn veterans of his shattered column, he formed the left wing of the retreating army; and at its head, during the campaign of 1814, he gave more than one severe repulse to the Prussians, who were pressing towards Paris under Marshal Blucher. These encounters were chiefly on the banks of the Marne, and especially at Nangis, in the north of France, where he fought a severe action with the allies on the 17th of February; but these struggles and all the valour of the French Imperialists were vain, for ere long the capital was taken; then Germany found itself freed from oppression; Holland rang with acclamations on the downfall of Napoleon; and Wellington had halted in his long career of victory, on the banks of the Garonne, and by the hill of Toulouse.
Macdonald adhered to the fallen Emperor—the child of Destiny—and was with him in the old palace of Fontainebleau at the time of his abdication from the most splendid of European thrones. Hope had fled. His army was dispersed and crumbling to pieces; its great officers and leaders had abandoned him; and such is the instability of human affairs, that the people of whose blood he had been so lavish—the people to whom he had been a demi-god—were turning with ardour to another monarch, and welcomed the foemen against whom they had struggled for more than twenty years of war and carnage that were without parallel.
"The wreck of the army assembled at Fontainebleau," says General Bourienne, "the remains of a million of men levied in fifteen months—comprising the corps of Marshals Oudinot, Ney, Macdonald, and General Gerard—did not exceed twenty-five thousand."