The French numbered 160,000 bayonets and sabres; the allies 240,000. The outposts were soon engaged on the 16th; the following day was spent in skirmishes and manoeuvres till the three allied armies formed a junction, and the stern conflict of the 18th began with all its terrors over an extent of line that covered seven miles. A little village on the French right, where Napoleon had posted himself, was lost and retaken again and again at the bayonet's point under a storm of round and grape shot. Noon arrived, but the battle was still undecided, when all breathless with speed, an officer, with his uniform torn and bloody, rushed towards the Emperor. "Sire," he exclaimed, "the left wing has given way; the Saxon cavalry and artillery have gone over to the enemy!" "Silence!" replied Napoleon, sternly; "silence!" The intelligence was kept secret from the right and centre, and still the strife went on. By three p.m. came the still more alarming tidings that the Saxon infantry had deserted _en masse_ to the allies. This also was kept a secret from the French troops, though the Imperial Guard was ordered to take their place; but the power thus attained by the allies was no longer to be withstood, and a precipitate retreat towards the Rhine became the first thought of the vanquished Emperor. At nightfall he gave the order to fall back, leaving the environs of Leipzig strewed with dead and dying; but his order was tardily executed, as all the French fugitives with their baggage, cannon, and wounded, on horseback, on foot, or in waggons, were compelled to take _one_ road, every other being occupied by the cavalry and horse artillery of the victors; consequently, the sufferings and slaughter of the French, even after the field was lost, became dreadful. Napoleon, before retiring, had ordered that the bridge of the White Elster should be undermined, and directed Macdonald and Prince Joseph Poniatowski, with their divisions, to defend a portion of the suburbs that lay between the advancing enemy and the Borna road; and to leave nothing undone to maintain their post to the last, that the retreat of the army and baggage might be fully covered. Poniatowski was brave as a lion. He was nephew of Stanislaus Augustus, the last King of Poland, and was animated alike by the purest patriotism and hatred of the Russians; hence he served France against them as the oppressors of his house and native country. He had 2000 Polish infantry and a few horse with him; and seeing the desperation of affairs, as the waggons of wounded, dripping with blood, the heavy artillery with their tumbrils, and the masses of fugitive soldiery exhausted by three days of fighting and excitement, pressed in close ranks across the bridge of the Elster, he drew his sabre and turning to his countrymen--