Far over the city--as it were at the top of the D--at Lindenthal, we see MARMONT stationed to meet BLÜCHER when he arrives on that side. To the right of him is NEY, and further off to the right, on heights eastward, MACDONALD. Then round the curve towards the south in order, AUGEREAU, LAURISTON [behind whom is NAPOLEON himself and the reserve of Guards], VICTOR [at Wachau], and PONIATOWSKI, near the Pleisse River at the bottom of the D. Near him are the cavalry of KELLERMANN and MILHAUD, and in the same direction MURAT with his, covering the great avenues of approach on the south. Outside all these stands SCHWARZENBERG'S army, of which, opposed to MACDONALD and LAURISTON, are KLEINAU'S Austrians and ZIETEN'S Prussians, covered on the flank by Cossacks under PLATOFF. Opposed to VICTOR and PONIATOWSKI are MEERFELDT and Hesse-Homburg's Austrians, WITTGENSTEIN'S Russians, KLEIST'S Prussians, GUILAY'S Austrians, with LICHTENSTEIN'S and THIELMANN'S light troops: thus reaching round across the Elster into the morass on our near left-- the lower point of the D.] SEMICHORUS I OF RUMOURS [aerial music] This is the combat of Napoleon's hope, But not of his assurance! Shrunk in power He broods beneath October's clammy cope, While hemming hordes wax denser every hour. SEMICHORUS II He knows, he knows that though in equal fight He stand s heretofore the matched of none, A feeble skill is propped by numbers' might, And now three hosts close round to crush out one! DUMB SHOW The Leipzig clocks imperturbably strike nine, and the battle which is to decide the fate of Europe, and perhaps the world, begins with three booms from the line of the allies. They are the signal for a general cannonade of devastating intensity. So massive is the contest that we soon fail to individualize the combatants as beings, and can only observe them as amorphous drifts, clouds, and waves of conscious atoms, surging and rolling together; can only particularize them by race, tribe, and language. Nationalities from the uttermost parts of Asia here meet those from the Atlantic edge of Europe for the first and last time. By noon the sound becomes a loud droning, uninterrupted and breve-like, as from the pedal of an organ kept continuously down. CHORUS OF RUMOURS Now triple battle beats about the town, And now contracts the huge elastic ring Of fighting flesh, as those within go down, Or spreads, as those without show faltering!