RETROSPECTIVE VIEW FROM THE TOWER OF THE OBSERVATORY.
He must be a stoic, or something more, who can stand on this time-worn tower, without recalling to mind those stupendous events which occurred a quarter of a century ago, around the base of the building. No event, ancient or modern, can at all compare with the battles around Leipzig, in Oct. 1814: whether we look to the magnitude of the armies—the discipline, valour, and enthusiasm of the men—the talents and skill of the commanders—or the momentous object for which they fought. Six crowned heads—three Emperors and three Kings—were present at these terrific conflicts, and witnessed the carnage and havoc among five hundred thousand soldiers engaged for several days and nights in mortal combat!! This was not the undisciplined rabble, or the effeminate retinue of an Oriental despot, crossing the Hellespont in pride and ignorance; but veterans from every country between the mountains of Norway and the mouths of the Danube—between the Atlantic on the West and Siberia in the East. These battles were not for mere victory, or to decide some political quarrel between two or more states. No. It was for the very existence of sceptres—for the independence or subjugation of every empire and kingdom in Continental Europe. The struggle was between the oppressor and the oppressed—between Napoleon the aggressor, and the allied Sovereigns, as defenders of their crowns, hearths, and altars. The one army had the disgrace of a hundred defeats to obliterate and avenge—the other the laurels of a hundred victories to preserve and sustain. The French fought for the glory of their country, or rather of their Emperor, and the conquest of Europe—the Allies, for the liberation of their soil from thraldom, and the repulsion, if not the deposition, of a tyrant invader.
Such a prodigious accumulation and concentration of martial hosts,—excited, agitated, and impelled by the fiercer passions of our nature—by ambition, hatred, and revenge—portended the approach of some great crisis in the affairs of the world. The feeling on both sides was, evidently, “aut Cæsar aut nullus.” The grand crisis was indeed at hand. The benignant Star of Peace and Justice was about to rise, in splendour, from the East;—while the malignant Meteor of War, that had scattered, for twenty years, plague, pestilence and famine over a groaning world, was about to descend from its bad eminence, and be extinguished for ever in the Atlantic surge.
Napoleon, with all his strength of mind, was superstitious; having some peculiar notions about fate, and destiny, and stars and fortune—as though these imaginary beings had any power to control the laws of Nature, or interfere between cause and effect, whether in the moral or physical world.
It is not improbable that, when, in the night of the 15th October, Napoleon saw three “death-rockets” rise from the southern horizon, streaming their pale but brilliant light high through the Heavens—and, when, immediately afterwards, he beheld four blood-red meteors springing up far far to the northward, indicating too plainly that the signal from the grand Austro-Russian army in the South was answered by the Swedo-Prussian in the North, his moral courage may have experienced a momentary depression, and his superstition an alarm! There was little time, however, for reflection. Action, action was soon required. At the dawn of day the Austro-Russian army attacked the whole southern front of the French position with great fury but no success. Six desperate attempts were reiterated, one after the other—but all failed! This was discouraging enough—worse remained behind. The moment of exhaustion among the allied troops was seized upon by Napoleon, who, by one gigantic effort, pierced and penetrated the very centre of the allied line, while Murat, Maubourg, and Kellerman, dashed through the gap with the whole of the cavalry! At this moment of frightful peril, when the torrent of French troops was pouring through the fatal breach with irresistible impetuosity, shouting and exulting in the successful exploit, Alexander called to his faithful Cossack guards, and pointing to the column of French cavalry that was thundering forward in the rear of the allies, addressed a few, and but a few words to them—probably not dissimilar from those of our own poet, at another terrific combat—
——on ye brave,
Who rush to glory or the grave—
Wave, Cossacks! all your banners wave!
And charge with all your chivalry!
The valorous Pulk right well fulfilled the emperor’s order. The “furious Huns” sprang, like tigers, on the “fiery Franks,” and not only charged and checked the headlong torrent, but rolled back the dense mass of cavalry at the point of their spears, with destructive carnage, through the opening by which it had penetrated the Austro-Russian line. Thus, at the moment when all appeared lost for the allies, a handful of semi-savages from the banks of the Don overwhelmed the finest body of French horse that ever paraded on the banks of the Seine—and that with the King of Naples at its head!