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By Root 2681 0

ball in the hand and badly bruised on the left arm, while a ball had gone through my hat and another through my coat, on top of which four horses had been killed beneath me . . . Disorder reigned on all sides. The blockages caused by wagons in every street and the congestion of the fugitives prevented the maintenance of anything in the way of a formation and impeded the transmission of orders. Terror had taken hold of everyone, and the effects of this may be judged if I tell you that the town is encompassed by a circular boulevard that separates it from its suburbs, and that columns of troops were therefore converging on the Lindenau road - the only way out - from three different directions. So dense was the crowd that, having made my retreat by keeping to the fringes of the boulevard, I found that I could not get into the main stream without assistance. In the end two officers of the Eighty-Sixth opened the way for me. While one of them flung himself into the throng and opened a small space for me with his sabre, the other seized the bridle of the little Arab I was riding and dragged it into the middle of the road. So great was the press that it was lifted off its feet and for some moments literally carried along.80

For all the disorder, at first all went well enough. Disorganized and exhausted themselves, the Allies did not react until the retreat had been under way for many hours, and even then they were held at bay by the French rearguard. Many of Napoleon’s troops therefore escaped, and even more would doubtless have done so but for the causeway being mistakenly blown up. As a result of this, defeat was converted into catastrophe: at least 30,000 French troops who might have got away were now either killed or captured. Added to the 38,000 casualties the French had suffered over the previous three days, not to mention the many thousands who had been lost earlier in the campaign, this was a blow from which recovery was simply impossible. On the battlefield lay the wreckage not just of an army, but of an empire. On 21 October, Sir George Jackson rode into Leipzig in company with Metternich:

Part of our way lay over the field of battle, and a more revolting and sickening spectacle I never beheld. Scarcely could we move forward a step without passing over the dead body of some poor fellow, gashed with wounds and clotted in the blood that had weltered from them; another, perhaps, without an arm or a leg; here and there a headless trunk, or it might be a head only, which caused our horses to stumble or start aside, or it might be one of their own species lying across our path, his entrails hanging out, or some part of his body blown away. It made one’s blood run cold to glance only, as we passed along, upon the upturned faces of the dead, agony on some, a placid smile on others . . . We got over this ‘field of glory’ as quickly as we could, and perhaps some of us affected to be less impressed by this terrible scene than we really were. But I know there was many an involuntary shudder, and that many of the glibbest tongues were for the time quite silenced.81

Allied casualties had also been very high - at least 50,000 men - but the victory was to prove cheap at the cost, with Napoleonic control of central and northern Europe now evaporating overnight. With the grande armée fleeing for the Rhine, Napoleon’s German satellites either hastened to come over to the Allies or collapsed. Also lost at this time was Holland, which the French evacuated in the first week of November, leaving a group of influential notables to establish a provisional government. East of the Rhine, all that was left was Denmark, which, though fiercely loyal, had only a small army and was menaced by a Bernadotte determined to conquer Norway. On other fronts things were not much better. In the Pyrenees, Wellington’s army had crossed the Spanish frontier, broken through the defensive lines the French had established and advanced to the outskirts of Bayonne. In the Illyrian provinces, the French had been driven out by a combination of a large Austrian