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.