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.
To enable you to pursue the train of events, as far as I was capable of
informing myself respecting them, I will endeavour to relate them as
they occurred. It was not till the arrival of marshal Marmont with his
corps of the army in this neighbourhood that any idea of the probability
of a general engagement at Leipzig began to be entertained. That
circumstance happened in the beginning of October. These guests brought
along with them every species of misery and distress, which daily
increased in proportion as those hosts of destroyers kept gradually
swelling into a large army. They were joined from time to time by
several other corps; the city was nearly surrounded by bivouacs; and,
gracious God! what proceedings! what havoc!--We had frequently been
informed that all Saxony, from Lusatia to the Elbe, resembled one vast
desert, where nothing was to be seen but towns laid waste and
plundered, villages reduced to ashes, naked and famishing
inhabitants;--that there was no appearance of any other living creature;
nay, not even a trace of vegetation remaining.
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