And now came the catastrophe at Leipsic--the three days' battle of the Nations--where, on the first day, Ney was defeated by Bluecher, after a desperate struggle in which he lost 4,000 killed and wounded, and upward of two thousand prisoners. On the third day, after the defection of the Saxons, he held out for five hours with 5,000 men against 20,000, and retired fighting to the end. Through the whole of the succeeding campaign of France, he was at the emperor's side; and when, in spite of all the genius of Napoleon, and all the bravery of his soldiers, Paris capitulated, Ney was one of three marshals sent by the defeated Emperor of the French to negotiate with the Emperor of Russia for his abdication in favor of his son, the King of Rome. This mission failed of any result--Napoleon went to Elba, and Louis XVIII. reigned over France in his stead. Ney accepted the new order of things, and was created a peer of France, knight of St. Louis, and governor of the sixth Military Division. But the world was for the time at peace; and Ney's occupation was gone. He had been a fighter all his life--he could not turn courtier at the end. He had married, in 1810, Mlle Auguie, who had been brought up in the court of Louis XVI., was a friend of Hortense Beauharnais, and naturally fond of gayety and society. The great marshal was a simple and rather illiterate man, who had had no time to cultivate fashionable graces, so it happened that when Madame la Marechal gave a banquet or a ball, Ney used not to appear, but dined by himself, in his own apartments, as far removed as possible from the noise of the festival. It is said that outside the field of battle he was one of the timidest of men, and even submitted quite tamely to the insolence of his own servants. In January, 1815, he departed for his country-seat of Coudreaux, near Chateaudun, where he lived in the simplest possible fashion, till on March 6th, an aide-de-camp of the Minister of War brought him an order to return at once to the head-quarters of the Military Division of which he was commander. Instead of going directly to his post, he went by way of Paris, where he heard for the first time of the landing of Napoleon. "It is a great misfortune," said he. "Whom can we send against him?"