Even valor like this must, nevertheless, succumb to numbers, and above all to treason; for, during the hottest of the fighting at the gates of Leipsic, a Baden battalion, which until then had fought valiantly in the French ranks, suddenly abandoned the Saint Peter gate which they had been ordered to defend, and thus gave the enemy entrance to the city. From that time, according to what I have heard related by several officers who were present in this affray, the streets of Leipsic presented the most horrifying spectacle. Constrained to withdraw, our men did not do so without disputing the ground. But an irreparable misfortune was soon to make the Emperor despair.

These are the facts which signalize that deplorable day, such as my memory even now recalls them. I do not know why it is, but not one of the great events of which I have been a witness presents itself so clearly to my mind as a scene which took place, so to say, under the walls of Leipsic. After having triumphed over incredible obstacles, we had at last succeeded in crossing the Elster on the mill bridge of Lindenau. I seem still to see the Emperor, himself placing officers on the road whom he charged with indicating the point of reunion of the corps to the isolated men who should present themselves. On that day, after an immense calamity, caused by numbers, his solicitude was extended to all as it was after a decisive triumph. But he was so overcome by fatigue that a few moments of repose were indispensably necessary, and he slept profoundly amidst the roar of cannon until a terrible explosion was heard. Soon after, I saw the King of Naples and Marshal Augereau enter the bivouac of His Majesty. They brought him melancholy tidings. The great bridge of the Elster had just blown up, and it was the last point of communication with the rear-guard, still twenty thousand strong, and left on the other side of the river under the command of Marshal Macdonald. "That is how they carry out my orders!" exclaimed the Emperor, seizing his head violently between his hands. Then he remained pensive for a moment, as if absorbed in his reflections.

His Majesty had in fact given orders to mine all the bridges across the Elster and to blow them up, but not until the whole French army had been put in surety by the stream. I have since heard different tales concerning this event; I have listened to many contradictory reports. It is not my business to seek to shed light upon a historical point so controverted as this one; I ought to limit myself to relating what was entirely within my cognizance, and it is that which I have done. At the same time, I may be permitted to submit here a simple observation to the reader which has presented itself to my mind whenever I have read or heard it said that the Emperor himself gave orders to have the bridge blown up, so as to shelter his own person from the enemy's pursuit. I beg pardon for the expression, but this supposition seems to me an absurdity which passes all belief; for it is very evident that if, in these disastrous circumstances, the Emperor had been thinking of his personal safety, we should not have found him voluntarily prolonging his stay in the palace of the King of Saxony, where he was exposed to a far more imminent danger than he could incur after leaving Leipsic. Assuredly, moreover, the Emperor did not enjoy the consternation that seized him when he learned that twenty thousand of his men were separated from him, and possibly forever.

How many misfortunes inevitably resulted from the destruction of the last bridge on the route from Leipsic to Lindenau! and what traits of heroism, the majority of which will remain forever unknown, signalized this disaster! Marshal Macdonald, seeing himself separated from the army, plunged with his horse into the Elster and was so fortunate as to attain the other bank; but General Dumortier disappeared and perished in the stream while attempting to follow his intrepid chief, and so did a large number of officers and soldiers; they had all sworn not to surrender to the enemy, and there were but few who submitted to the cruel necessity of becoming prisoners. The death of Prince Poniatowski was keenly regretted by the Emperor, and it may be said that all who were at headquarters were profoundly afflicted by the loss of the Polish hero. Details of this misfortune were eagerly sought for, irreparable though it was. It was known that His Majesty had charged him to cover the retreat of the army, and no one was ignorant that the Emperor's confidence could not have been better placed. Some related that, seeing himself pressed by the enemy against a river without a bridge, they had heard him say to those surrounding him: "Gentlemen, here we must succumb with honor." They added that, putting his heroic resolve at once into action, he had swum his horse across the Pleisse, in spite of the wounds received in a stubborn combat which he had maintained since morning. Finally, we learned that, finding no refuge but the waters of the Elster against inevitable captivity, the brave prince had plunged into them without considering the impracticable escarpment of the opposite bank, and in a few minutes both horse and rider were engulfed. Such was the end, at once deplorable and glorious, of one of the most brilliant and chivalric officers who have shown themselves worthy to figure among the elite of French generals.

Meanwhile the dearth of ammunition obliged the Emperor to retire promptly, although in the greatest order, upon Erfurt, a city richly provisioned with food, forage, armaments, equipments, in fine, with every kind of munitions. His Majesty arrived there the 23d, having had engagements every day, in order to secure his retreat, with forces four or five times more numerous than those remaining at his disposal. The Emperor remained in Erfurt only two days, and left it on the 25th, after receiving the adieux of his brother-in-law, the King of Naples, whom he was never to see again. I witnessed a part of this last interview, and thought I observed a nameless constraint in the attitude of the King of Naples, but His Majesty did not appear to notice it. It is true that the King did not announce his hasty departure, and that His Majesty was ignorant that this prince had secretly received an Austrian general. 1 However (and I ought to call attention to the fact because I have had frequent occasion to remark it), so many blows, precipitated so to say, one upon another, had been striking the Emperor for some time, that he seemed almost insensible to them; one would have thought him wholly intrenched in his ideas of fatality. But although unaffected by his own misfortunes, His Majesty gave full rein to his indignation when he learned that the allies considered the King of Saxony as their prisoner and had declared him a traitor precisely because he was the only one who had not betrayed him. Assuredly, if fortune had once more become favorable, the King of Saxony would have found himself the master of one of the largest kingdoms in Europe; but fortune was now always against us, even our triumphs being followed only by a useless glory.

Thus, for example, the French army was soon to cover itself with glory at Hanau, when it was obliged to pass through and overthrow the numerous army of Austrians and Bavarians assembled at that point under the command of General Wrede. Six thousand prisoners were the result of this triumph, which at the same time opened to us the approaches of Mayence, which we hoped to reach without encountering new obstacles. November 2, after a march of fourteen days from Leipsic, we saw once more the borders of the Rhine, and could breathe with some security.

After having devoted five days to the reorganization of the army, given his orders and assigned to each marshal and chief of corps the post he was to occupy during his absence, the Emperor left Mayence the 7th and on the 9th slept at Saint-Cloud, where he returned preceded by several trophies; for between Erfurt and Frankfort we had taken twenty flags from the Bavarians. These flags, brought to the minister of war by M. Lecouteulx, aide-de-camp of Prince de Neufchâtel, had preceded by two days His Majesty's arrival in Paris; and they had been already presented to the Empress, to whom the Emperor had offered them in the following terms: "Madame and dearest wife, I send you twenty flags taken by my armies in the battles of Wachan, Leipsic, and Hanau; it is a homage which I love to pay you. I desire you to see in it a mark of my great satisfaction with your conduct during the regency which I confided to you."

Under the Consulate and during the first six years of the Empire, whenever the Emperor returned to Paris after a campaign, it was because the campaign was terminated; the news of a peace concluded after victory had always preceded him. For the second time, it was otherwise when he came back from Mayence. On this occasion, as on that of the return from Smorghoni, the Emperor left the war still in progress, and returned, no longer to offer France the results of his victories, but to ask for more men and money in order to repair the failures and losses experienced by our armies. And yet, in spite of this difference in the result of our wars, the welcome given by the nation to His Majesty was still the same, at least in appearance. The addresses from the different cities of the interior were neither less numerous nor more chary of expressions of devotion; those who conceived fears for the future displayed even more loyalty than the others, lest their gloomy forebodings should be divined. For my part, it never once occurred to me that the Emperor might definitively succumb in the struggle he was maintaining; for my ideas did not go so far, and it is only in reflecting on it since that I have been able to appreciate the dangers which already menaced him at the period to which we have arrived. I was like those men who, having passed the night on the brink of a precipice, learn the peril to which they have been exposed only when the day reveals it. Nevertheless, I ought to say that everybody was tired of war, and that those of my friends whom I saw on returning from Mayence, all talked to me of the necessity of peace.

Even within the palace, I heard many persons attached to the Emperor use similar language when out of his presence; but they gave His Majesty quite a different version. When he deigned to question me, which was not infrequently, on what I had heard, I told him the exact truth; and when, in these confidential relations of the Emperor's toilet, the word peace issued from my mouth, he would exclaim several times: "Peace! peace! . . . and who desires it more than I do? . . . It is they who do not want it. The more I grant, the more they demand."

An extraordinary occurrence, which took place on the very day that His Majesty arrived at Saint-Cloud, gave some reason to believe, when it became known, that the allies had conceived the design of opening new negotiations. It was learned that M. de Saint-Aignan, His Majesty's minister at the ducal courts of Saxony, had been forcibly abducted and taken to Frankfort, where M. de Metternich, Prince Schwarzenberg, and the ministers of Russia and Prussia were then assembled. There most pacific overtures were made to him in the name of the sovereign allies; after which M. de Saint-Aignan was at liberty to repair at once to the Emperor in order to acquaint him with the details of the abduction and the resulting propositions. The offers of the allies, concerning which I knew nothing and, consequently, can say nothing, must, nevertheless, have seemed worthy of the Emperor's examination; for there was presently a general rumor throughout the palace that a new congress was to assemble at Manheim, that the Duc de Vicenza had been designated by His Majesty as his minister plenipotentiary, and that, in order to shed more lustre on his mission, he had just been intrusted with the portfolio of foreign affairs. I remember that this news was very favorably received, because, although it was doubtless the result of prejudice, every one knew that the general public were not pleased at seeing the Duc de Bassano in the position to which the Duc de Vicenza was called as his successor. The Duc de Bassano was supposed to anticipate what he believed to be the real wishes of the Emperor, and to be averse to peace. We shall see later on, by a response His Majesty made to me at Fontainebleau, how gratuitous and devoid of all foundation these rumors were.

It seemed at this time all the more probable that the allies really had the intention of treating for peace, since, by forcibly procuring a French negotiator, they had gone to unheard-of lengths in order to attribute the first proceedings to the Emperor. And what gave great weight to the belief in the pacific dispositions of Europe was, that there was question not merely of a continental peace, as at Tilsit and Schönbrunn, but of a general peace in which England could intervene as a contracting party; so that it was hoped that we should gain in security for the results what we might, perhaps, lose by the severity of the conditions. But, unhappily, the hope to which we yielded with anticipated joy was of short duration. We soon learned that the propositions communicated to M. de Saint-Aignan, after his abduction, were only a lure, an old diplomatic ruse to which the foreigners had resorted in order to lull the Emperor with false expectations. A month, in fact, had not elapsed, there had not been time to complete the exchange of preliminary correspondence, which takes place in such cases, when the Emperor learned of the famous declaration of Frankfort, in which, far from entering into negotiations with His Majesty, they affected to separate his cause from that of France. What intrigues! And how one blesses his own mediocrity with all his heart when comparing himself to men condemned to live in this labyrinth of high-toned cheating and honorary hypocrisy! The miserable certainty was acquired that the foreigners wanted a war of extermination, and it renewed consternation where hope was already reigning. But the genius of His Majesty was not abated, and thenceforth all his efforts were directed to the necessity of once more making head against the enemy, not now to conquer his provinces, but to guarantee from invasion the sacred soil of the fatherland.