kept on. The next day, about ten o'clock, near a
village whose name I cannot recollect, we were ordered to halt, and
then we felt a trembling in the air. The colonel and Sergeant Pinto
said:

"The battle has begun!" and at the same moment, the colonel, waving his
sword, cried: "Forward!"

We started at a run; knapsacks, cartouche-boxes, muskets, mud, all
drove on; we cared for nothing. Half an hour after we saw, a few
thousand paces ahead, a long column, in which followed artillery,
cavalry, and infantry, one after the other; behind us, on the road to
Duben, we saw another, all pushing forward at their utmost speed.
Regiments even advancing at the double quick across the fields.

At the end of the road we could see the two spires of the churches of
Saint Nicholas and Saint Thomas in Leipzig, piercing the sky, while to
the right and left, on both sides of the city, rose great clouds of
smoke through which broad flashes were darting. The noise increased;
we were yet more than a league from the city, but we were forced to
almost shout to hear each other, and men gazed around, pale as death,
seeming by their looks to say:

"This is indeed a battle?"

Sergeant Pinto cried that it was worse than Eylau. He laughed no more,
nor did Zebede; but on, on we rushed, officers incessantly urging us
forward. We seemed to grow delirious; the love of country was indeed
striving within us, but still greater was the furious eagerness for the
fight.

At eleven o'clock we descried the battle-field about a league in front
of Leipzig. We saw the steeples and roofs crowded with people, and the
old ramparts on which I had walked so often, thinking of Catharine.
Opposite us, twelve or fifteen hundred yards distant, two regiments of
red lancers were drawn up, and a little to the left, two or three
regiments of mounted chasseurs in the fields along the Partha, and
between them filed the long column from Duben. Farther on, along the
slope, were the divisions Ricard, Dombrowski, Souham, and several
others, with their rear to the city; cannons limbered, with their
caissons--the cannoneers and artillerymen on horseback--stood ready to
start off; and far behind, on a hill, around one of those old
farmhouses with flat roofs and immense outlying sheds, so often seen in
that country, glittered the brilliant uniforms of the staff.

It was the army of reserve, commanded by Ney. His left wing
communicated with Marmont, who was posted on the