After this rebuff, the fickle goddess forsook her favourite child! The assailing armies hemmed in, closer and closer, the contracting circles of Napoleon’s troops, and after days of ineffectual struggles to revive a sinking cause, the hero of a hundred victories was obliged to sue for an armistice! No answer being returned, the mortified emperor prepared for retreat. But even here Fortune turned her back on him. The Saxon troops threw off their allegiance, and even fired on their former companions in arms, while endeavouring to extricate themselves from the western gate of Leipzig! The only bridge, too, by which they could escape, was blown up by mistake, while twenty-five thousand Frenchmen were left prisoners on the other side! Napoleon with difficulty reached the western bank of the Estler—Poniatouski was drowned in that muddy ditch—and a mere wreck of the Gallic army reached the Rhine. From that day, the star of Napoleon descended till its light was quenched for ever in the western wave! Of all the auxiliaries and mercenaries which various passions, propensities, necessities, or interests had attracted round the standard of the victorious emperor, one only remained true to its trust in the memorable retreat from Leipzig! Italians, Bavarians, Saxons, Swedes—
“All, all forsook the friendless guilty mind,
But faithful Poland lingered still behind.”
It may not require any great fortitude to meet the scowl or scorn of our enemy, whether conqueror or conquered; but he must have nerves of iron who can look in the face of friend betrayed. The sight of the gallant and deceived Poles, bearing nobly the hardships and miseries of a disastrous flight, might have wrung tears of remorse from Napoleon’s eyes. But he had no heart. Egotism was the nutriment on which even his ambition fed. What said he, when viewing the wretched remains of his army when it halted at Erfurt, on the 23d of October? “They are a set of scoundrels, who are going to the devil.” Retributive justice ordained that he himself should not be far behind them!
The Tower of the Observatory stands close to the Estler and the scene of the dreadful evacuation of the town, the death of Poniatouski, and the blowing up of the bridge. It also commands a view of most of the theatres of operations during the successive battles, besides an excellent bird’s-eye view of the town itself. No one should fail to visit this spot, and recall the mighty events which occurred around it.
MAGDEBURG to HAMBURG.
A good railroad whisks us along, through monotonous corn-fields, from Leipzig to Magdeburg, in three or four hours. This is the strongest fortification (always excepting Kœnigstein) on the Elbe—and contains more than fifty-thousand people, garrison and all. It is, or rather was, in Saxony; but, thanks to the auspices of Napoleon, in favour of his pet of Dresden, it is now Prussian, and likely to be long so. It is of immense extent, and would require thirty or forty thousand men to defend it—consequently double that number to invest it. As all great virtues are assailed by virulent abuse, so all strong cities are honoured with long sieges. The history of Magdeburg should be printed and posted on the gates of Paris. It has had its ups and downs in its day. It was besieged many a time, and sometimes taken. Although it repulsed the famous Count Wallenstein, in the thirty years’ war, it fell, after two years’ siege, before the magnanimous Tilley (1631), who sacked the city; but in his humanity, spared the whole of the inhabitants—except thirty thousand, whom he massacred, without distinction of age or sex!! These are among the “splendid miseries” to which fortified towns and cities have been entitled, time immemorial—from the days of Alexander and Titus, to those of Napoleon and Wellington—from the sacred heights of Solyma, to the sandy plains of Haerlem! This doubtful glory—this dangerous pre-eminence, appears to be the height of a great people’s ambition—though it is probable that a nation’s strength has more in its moral courage and physical energies, than in dead walls and deep ditches.
A steamer starts at five o’clock every morning from Magdeburg to Hamburg, and when the Elbe is not very low, the passage may be performed in one day. But fortunately, or unfortunately, we had not had a wet day, or hardly a cloud in the sky, from the day we left London, till our return to that metropolis, and therefore the river was so shallow, that we were forty-eight hours on the voyage. There never was a vessel that had a greater partiality for the ground than ours—and when once her keel and the sand came in contact, it was as difficult to separate them as to disengage two furious mastiffs joined in mortal combat. Our captain, too, had a singular method of loosening his vessel from her hold on the shoal. Instead of carrying out an anchor astern, and dragging her off in that direction, as we drag dogs from one another by their tails, he invariably took the anchor out a-head, and after prizing the vessel as far forward on the bank as possible, he then tried the retrogressive plan, and, of course, succeeded, though sometimes after two or three hours’ delay. At length we came to a dead stop—for there was not three feet water in any part of the river; so we were obliged to shift into another steamer, “below bar” and jogged along, as above the barrier, but more of our time passed aground than afloat. However, we had a very pleasant society on board—people from various countries—very good table-d’hôte—but, as the weather was fine, and the berths close and crowded, I picked out the softest plank I could find on deck, and slept in the open air, during our descent of the Elbe. There is little or no improvement of the scenery between Dresden and the mouth of the river. The Elbe pays a heavy fine in the shape of monotony for its short but romantic route through Saxon Switzerland!