When, at midday, all was in readiness and the order was given, the artillery fire was so rapid that the successive shots were heard, not separately, but in a long, sullen note. By two, Victor and Oudinot on the right, with Mortier and Macdonald on the left, were well forward of Gueldengossa, but the place itself still held out. At three the cavalry, under Murat, Latour-Maubourg, and Kellermann, were sped direct upon it. With awful effort they broke through, and the bells of Leipsic began to ring in triumph--prematurely. The Czar had peremptorily summoned from Schwarzenberg's command the Austro-Russian reserve, and at four these, with the Cossack guard, charged the French cavalry, hurling them back to Markkleeberg. Nightfall found Victor again at Wachau, and Macdonald holding Liebertwolkwitz. Simultaneously with the great charge of the allies Meerveldt had dashed out from Connewitz toward Doelitz, but his force was nearly annihilated, and he himself was captured. At Moeckern, Marmont, after gallant work with inferior numbers, had been beaten on his left, and then compelled for safety to draw in his right. While he still held Gohlis and Eutritzsch, the mass of his army had been thrown back into Leipsic. Throughout the day Bertrand made a gallant and successful resistance to superior numbers, and drove that portion of the allied forces opposed to him away from Lindenau as far as Plagwitz. At nightfall three blank shots announced the cessation of hostilities all around. In the face of superior numbers, the French had not lost a single important position, and whatever military science had been displayed was all theirs; Bluecher made the solitary advance move of the allies, the seizure of Moeckern by York's corps; Schwarzenberg had been literally mired in his attempt to outflank his enemy, and but for Alexander's peremptory recall of the reserves destined for the same task, the day would have been one of irretrievable disaster to the coalition. Yet Napoleon knew that he was lost unless he could retreat. Clearly he had expected a triumph, for in the city nothing was ready, and over the Elster was but one crossing, the solitary bridge on the Frankfort road. The seventeenth was the first day of the week; both sides were exhausted, and the Emperor of the French seems to have felt that at all hazards he must gain time. During the previous night long consultations had been held, and the French divisions to the south had been slightly compacted. In the morning Meerveldt, the captured Austrian general, the same man who after Austerlitz had solicited and obtained on the part of Francis an interview from Napoleon, was paroled, and sent into his own lines to ask an armistice, together with the intervention of Francis on the terms of Prague: renunciation of Poland and Illyria by Napoleon, the absolute independence of Holland, of the Hanse towns, of Spain, and of a united Italy. When we remember that England was paymaster to the coalition, and was fighting