On the 28th, the Emperor visited the field of battle, which presented the most frightful spectacle; he gave orders that the sufferings of the wounded should be alleviated as much as possible, and those of the inhabitants, the peasants whose houses and fields had been ravaged, burned, and pillaged; and afterwards ascended the heights whence he could watch the march of the retreating enemy. Nearly all the attendants had followed him in this excursion. There was brought to him a peasant from Nothlitz, a small village where the Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia had had their headquarters on the two preceding days. This peasant, interrogated by the Duc de Vicenza, said that he had seen a great personage brought to Nothlitz who had been wounded the day before in the midst of the allied staff; he was riding beside the Emperor of Russia at the moment when he was struck, and the Emperor seemed to take the keenest interest in his fate. He had been carried to the headquarters of Nothlitz on the crossed pikes of Cossacks; nothing had been found to cover him with but a mantle soaked with rain. On reaching Nothlitz, the Emperor Alexander's surgeon had amputated both of his legs and sent him on a couch to Dippoldiswalde, escorted by several detachments, Austrian, Prussian, and Russian.

On learning these details, the Emperor persuaded himself that this must be the Prince of Schwarzenberg. "He was a brave man," said he, "and I regret him." Then, after a silent pause, His Majesty resumed: "Then it is he who purges the fatality! That occurrence at the ball has always weighed on my heart as a sinister omen.... It is very evident now, that the omen was intended for him."

However, while the Emperor was indulging in this sort of conjectures and recalling his former presentiments, the prisoners brought before His Majesty were interrogated, and he learned that Prince Schwarzenberg had not been wounded, that he was in good health and had directed the retreat of the Austrian grand army. Who then was the important personage who had been struck by a French ball? Conjectures were beginning anew on this point when Prince de Neufchâtel received from an envoy of the King of Saxony a collar taken from the neck of a stray dog which had been found at Nothlitz; it was engraved with these words: I belong to General Moreau. Still this was merely an indication, but the suspicions it gave rise to were soon confirmed by abundant information.

Thus, Moreau received his death-blow the first time that he bore arms against his country, after having so often braved with impunity the fire of her enemies. History has passed an irrevocable sentence on him; nevertheless, in spite of the enmity that had long existed between them, I can affirm that the Emperor did not hear of his death without emotion, indignant though he was that so famous a French general should have taken arms against France and donned the Russian cockade.

This unexpected death produced a great effect in both camps. Our soldiers beheld in it a just punishment from Heaven, and a favorable presage for the Emperor. However that might be, here are some details which came afterwards to my knowledge, such as they were related by the valet de chambre of General Moreau.

The three sovereigns of Russia, Austria, and Prussia had watched the fighting on the 27th from the heights of Nothlitz, whence they had departed as soon as they saw that the day had gone against them. That same day, General Moreau had been wounded by a cannon-ball, near the intrenchments established before Dresden. Towards four o'clock in the afternoon he was taken to the country seat of a banker named Salir, at Nothlitz, where the Emperors of Russia and Austria had established their headquarters. Both legs of the General were amputated below the knee. After the amputation, he asked for something to eat and a cup of tea; three fried eggs and some tea were offered him, but he took nothing but the tea. Toward seven o'clock he was placed on a stretcher and borne to Passendorf by Russian soldiers. He spent the night in the country house of M. Tritschier, grand master of the forests. There he took nothing but another cup of tea, and complained greatly of his sufferings. The next day, August 28, he was transported, again by Russian soldiers, from Passendorf to Dippoldiswalde, where he had a little white bread and a glass of lemonade at the house of a baker named Watz. An hour later, he was taken still nearer the frontiers of Bohemia. Russian soldiers carried him in the body of a coach detached from the train. During this passage the cries wrung from him by the intensity of his pains were incessant.

Such are the details I received at the time concerning Moreau's catastrophe, and it is well known that the General did not long survive his wound. The same ball which broke his two legs carried off an arm from Prince Ipsilanti, then an aide-de-camp of the Emperor Alexander; so that if the harm that one inflicts could repair the harm that one suffers, one might say that the ball which took General Kirchner and Marshal Duroc away from us was that day sent back to the enemy; but alas! those are melancholy consolations which one extracts from reprisals.

It is plain from the preceding pages, and especially from what appeared to be the decisive winning of the battle of Dresden, that wherever our troops were sustained by the all-powerful presence of the Emperor, they always gained advantages. Unluckily, it was not the same at several remote points on the line of operations. However, seeing the allies routed by the army that he commanded in person; sure, moreover, that General Vandamme would have maintained the position he had indicated to him through General Haxo, His Majesty returned to his first idea of marching on Berlin. He was already making his preparations to do so when the fatal tidings came that Vandamme, the victim of his own temerity, had vanished from the field of battle, and that his ten thousand men, hemmed in on all sides and overwhelmed by the enemy, had been cut to pieces. Vandamme was supposed to be dead, and it was only by later tidings that we learned he had been taken prisoner with a part of his troops. We also learned that Vandamme, carried away by his natural intrepidity, and unable to resist his desire to attack an enemy whom he saw within his reach, had quitted his defiles for that purpose. He had conquered at first, but when, after his victory, he attempted to resume his position, he found it occupied by Prussians who had seized it. Then he fought with the courage of despair, but all in vain, and General Kleist, proud of this fine trophy, led him to Prague in triumph. It was in speaking of Vandamme's audacious attempt that the Emperor employed that fine expression which has been so justly admired: "For a flying enemy you must make a bridge of gold, or oppose to him a wall of steel."

The Emperor listened with his habitual calmness to the details of the losses he had just experienced. Nevertheless, his words more than once expressed the astonishment caused him by Vandamme's deploreable temerity; he could not get over the fact that so experienced a general should have allowed himself to be drawn from his position. But the harm was done, and in such cases the Emperor never lost time in empty recriminations. "Come," said he, addressing the Duc de Bassano, "you have just heard . . . That is war! away up in the morning, and away down in the evening."

After various orders given to the army and its leaders, the Emperor left Dresden in the evening of September 3, to try and regain what had been lost by the audacious imprudence of General Vandamme. But this check, the first we had experienced since the resumption of hostilities, was like the signal for the long series of reverses which awaited us. One might have said that victory, making a final effort in our favor at Dresden, was at last weary; the remainder of the campaign was but a series of disasters, aggravated by treasons of every description, and terminated by the horrible catastrophe of Leipsic. Even before quitting Dresden, we had heard of the desertion to the enemy of a Westphalian regiment, with arms and baggage.

The Emperor left Marshal Saint-Cyr in Dresden with thirty thousand men, and orders to hold out to the last extremity; he desired to save this capital at all costs. September passed in marches and countermarches around the city, without any events of decisive importance. Alas! the Emperor was never again to see the garrison of Dresden. Circumstances, becoming more difficult, made it imperative on His Majesty to oppose a prompt obstacle to the progress of the allies. The King of Saxony, a rare model of fidelity among kings, wished to accompany the Emperor; he entered a carriage with the Queen and the Princess Augusta, under an escort from the grand headquarters. Two days after his departure, the junction of the Saxon troops with the French army took place at Eilenburg, on the borders of the Mulde. The Emperor exhorted these allies, whom he must have believed faithful, to maintain the independence of their country. He pointed out that Prussia was menacing Saxony and coveting its finest provinces; he reminded them of the proclamations of their sovereign, his worthy and faithful ally, finally, speaking in the name of military honor, he summoned them in conclusion to take him always for their guide, and to show themselves the worthy rivals of the soldiers of the grand army, with whom they were making common cause, and beside whom they were going to fight. The Emperor's words were translated and repeated to the Saxons by the Duc de Vicenza. This language on the lips of him whom they regarded as their sovereign's friend and the savior of their capital, seemed to produce a profound impression. We began the march, therefore, with confidence, not foreboding the approaching defection of these very men who had so often saluted the Emperor with enthusiastic shouts while swearing to fight to the death rather than desert him.

At this time, His Majesty's scheme was to fall on Blücher and the Prince-royal of Sweden, from whom the French army was separated only by a river. Hence we quitted Eilenburg, leaving in that residence the King of Saxony and his family, the Duc de Bassano, the grand park of artillery and all the equipages, while we turned towards Düben. Blücher and Bernadotte had retired, leaving Berlin exposed. Then the Emperor's plans became known; it was known that it was Berlin and not Leipsic toward which he was moving, and that Düben was merely a point of junction, whence the various corps there assembled could march together upon the capital of Prussia, of which the Emperor had twice possessed himself already.

Unhappily, the time was past when the mere indication of the Emperor's intentions was regarded as a signal of victory the leaders of the army, until then submissive, were beginning to reflect and even permitting themselves to disapprove of projects the execution of which alarmed them. When the Emperor's intention of marching on Berlin became known in the army, it was the signal for an almost universal dissatisfaction. The generals who had escaped the disasters of Moscow and the dangers of the double campaign of Germany were fatigued and perhaps in haste to enjoy their fortune and at last to taste repose in the bosom of their families. Some went so far as to accuse the Emperor of wishing to prolong the war. "Have not enough of us been killed?" said they, "must we all be left here?" Nor were these complaints made only in private; they were openly expressed, and sometimes so loudly that they reached the Emperor's ears; but in such cases His Majesty knew how not to hear.

It was during this suspicious attitude of a considerable number of the army chieftains that the defection of Bavaria became known. This added new force to the anxieties and discontent arising from the Emperor's resolve; an unheard-of thing occurred; his staff went in a body to the Emperor, entreating him to abandon his plans on Berlin and march on Leipsic. I saw how deeply the soul of the Emperor suffered from the necessity of listening to such remonstrances.

In spite of the respectful forms in which they were concealed, His Majesty remained undecided for two entire days; how long those forty-eight hours were! Never was bivouac or deserted cabin more dismal than the dismal château of Düben. In this lamentable residence I saw the Emperor for the first time completely idle; the indecision to which he was a prey kept him so absorbed that no one could have recognized him. Who would have believed it? to that activity which urged, which one might say incessantly devoured him, had succeeded an apparent nonchalance of which no idea can be formed. I saw him, during nearly an entire day, lying on a sofa, with a table in front of him covered with maps and papers which he did not look at, with no other occupation for whole hours together but that of slowly tracing large letters on sheets of white paper. It was because his mind was then wavering between his own will and the supplications of his generals. After two days of the most painful anxiety, he yielded, and thenceforward all was lost. Would to God that he had not listened to their complaints, that he had once more obeyed the presentiment that sought to master him! How many times he sadly repeated, in thinking of the concession he then made: "I would have avoided many disasters had I always followed my first impulse. I failed only by yielding to those of others."

The order to depart was given. Then, as if the army were prouder of having overcome the Emperor's will than of fighting the enemy under the sway of his high previsions, there was a general outburst of almost immoderate joy. Every face was radiant. "We are going," they repeated on all sides, "we are going to see France again, to embrace our children, our parents, our friends." The Emperor, and with him General Augereau, were the only persons who did not share the universal gladness. The Duc de Castiglione had just arrived at headquarters, after having avenged in part, on the army of Bohemia, the defeat of Vandamme; like the Emperor, he was impressed with gloomy presentiments concerning the results of this retrograde movement; he knew that defections would increase by degrees on the route of our enemies, and all the more dangerous ones because they were our allies but yesterday and knew our positions. As to His Majesty, he yielded with the conviction of the evil that would result, and I heard him end a conversation of more than an hour with the Marshal by these words, which he pronounced like a sentence of misfortune: "They have willed it!"

The Emperor, when moving on Düben, was at the head of a force which might be estimated at one hundred and twenty-five thousand men. He had taken this direction, hoping to find Blücher still on the Mulde; but the Russian [sic] general had recrossed the river, a measure which tended to accredit a rumor that had been in circulation for some time: they said that in a council of the sovereign allies, held previously in Prague, and at which Thoreau and the Prince-royal of Sweden were present, it had been agreed that wherever it could be avoided, no battle should be engaged when the Emperor was present, and that operations should be directed solely against the corps commanded by his lieutenants. Doubtless it was impossible to render a more striking homage to the superiority of the Emperor's genius; but at the same time it was to enchain him in his glory and paralyze his ordinarily omnipotent influence.

However that might be, the evil genius of France having prevailed over the good genius of the Emperor, we took the road to Leipsic, and arrived there early in the morning, October 15. At this moment the King of Naples was fighting with the Prince of Schwarzenberg, and His Majesty, having heard the cannon, merely passed through the city and went to visit the plain where the battle seemed to be in active progress. On his return he received the royal family of Saxony, which had come to rejoin him.

During his short stay at Leipsic' the Emperor performed an act of clemency which will doubtless be considered very meritorious when the gravity of the circumstances we were placed in is remembered. A merchant of that city, named Moldrecht, was accused and convicted of having distributed amongst the inhabitants, and even in the army, several thousand copies of a proclamation in which the Prince-royal of Sweden invited the Saxons to desert the Emperor's cause. When brought before a council of war, M. Moldrecht was unable to justify himself; and how could he have done so when several packages of the fatal proclamation had been found at his house? He was condemned to death. His weeping family came to throw themselves at the feet of the King of Saxony; but the facts were so evident and of so inexcusable a kind that the faithful King dared not show indulgence for a crime aimed still more at his ally than himself. But one resource was left to this unhappy family, that of appealing to the Emperor; but it was not easy to obtain access to him. M. Leborgne d'Ideville, interpreting secretary, proved willing to deposit a note on the Emperor's bureau. Having read it, His Majesty ordered a reprieve, which was equivalent to a full pardon. Events followed their course, and M. Moldrecht was saved.

Leipsic, at this period, was the centre of a circle in which fighting was going on at different points, and almost without interruption. The combats continued on the 16th, 17th, and 18th of October. His Majesty, ill-repaid for his clemency toward M. Moldrecht, reaped the bitter fruits of the proclamation scattered by means of this merchant. On that day the Saxon army deserted our cause and went over to Bernadotte. One hundred thousand men were now all that the Emperor had left, with three hundred thousand arrayed against him, so that if we had been one against two ever since the assumption of hostilities, we were now only one to three. The 18th, as is known, was the fatal day. In the evening, the Emperor was sitting on a red morocco camp-stool amidst the bivouac fires, dictating to Prince de Neufchâtel his orders for the night, when two artillery commanders presented themselves to His Majesty and told him that they were nearly out of ammunition. Within five days more than two hundred thousand discharges of cannon had been fired; the reserves were exhausted, and it would be hardly possible to keep up the firing for two hours. The nearest magazines were Magdeburg and Erfurt, whence it was impossible to obtain supplies soon enough; hence, the only step remaining was a retreat.

The retreat was ordered, therefore, and began the following day, the 19th, after a battle in which three hundred thousand men engaged in a deadly struggle over a space so contracted that its circumference did not exceed from seven to eight leagues. Before quitting Dresden, the Emperor charged Prince Poniatowski, who had just gained the baton of Marshal of France, with the defence of one of the faubourgs. "You will defend the southern faubourg," His Majesty had said to him. "Sire," the Prince responded, "I have very few men." — "Eh well! defend yourself with what you have." "Ah! Sire, we will hold out. We are all ready to perish for Your Majesty." Moved by these words, the Emperor held out his arms, and the Prince threw himself into them with tears in his eyes. It was a parting scene, for this was their last interview; the nephew of the last King of Poland, as will presently be seen, found a death as glorious as it was deplorable in the waters of the Elster.

At nine o'clock in the morning, the Emperor went to take leave of the royal family of Saxony. The interview was short, but most affectionate and sorrowful on either side. The King manifested the utmost indignation at the conduct of his troops. "I never could have believed it," said he; "I thought better of my Saxons; they are nothing but cowards." His grief was such that the Emperor, notwithstanding the immense injury done him by the desertion of the Saxons during the battle, sought to console this excellent prince.

As His Majesty was pressing him to quit Leipsic, and not remain exposed to the dangers of a capitulation, which had become inevitable, the venerable prince replied in the negative. "No," said he, "you have done enough, and it is pushing generosity too far to remain here a few minutes longer for the sake of consoling us." Even while the King of Saxony was speaking, the detonation of a heavy fusillade was heard; then the Queen and the Princess Augusta united their entreaties to those of the monarch. In the excess of their alarm, they seemed already to see the Emperor taken and slaughtered by the Prussians. Some officers came up and announced that the Prince-royal of Sweden had forced the entrance of one of the faubourgs; that General Benningsen, General Blücher, and the Prince of Schwarzenberg were entering the city on all sides, and that our soldiers were reduced to defending themselves from house to house. The peril to which the Emperor was exposed was imminent; he had not a moment more to lose; at last he consented to withdraw and the King of Saxony having accompanied him to the foot of the palace staircase, they embraced each other there for the last time.