iety, till you begin
to descend from the high plateau, over which the road has passed into
the wooded valley, in the centre of which the hill and town of Laon are
placed. The dreary aspect of this plateau, which, though cultivated in
every part, exhibited few traces of human habitation, was enlivened
occasionally by herds of pigs, of a lean and meagre breed, (followed by
shepherds of the most grotesque appearance,) wandering over the bare
fallows, and seemingly reduced to the necessity of feeding on their
mother earth.

At the distance of six miles from Laon, the descent begins to the plain
below, down the side of a deep ravine, beautifully clothed with woods
and vineyards. On the other side of this ravine lies the plateau on
which the battle of Craon was fought, whose level desolate surface
seemed a fit theatre for the struggle that was there maintained. At the
bottom of the ravine the road passes a long line of villages, surrounded
with wood and gardens, which had been wholly ruined by the operations of
the armies; and among the neighbouring woods we were shewn numerous
graves both of French and Russian soldiers.

The approach to Laon lies through a great morass, covered in different
places with low brushwood, and intersected only by the narrow chaussee
on which the road is laid. The appearance of the town is very striking;
standing on a hill in the centre of a plain of 10 or 12 miles in
diameter, bounded on all sides by steep and wooded ridges. It is
surrounded by an old wall, and some decayed towers, and is adorned by
some fine Gothic spires, whose apparent magnitude is much increased by
the elevated station on which they are placed.

In crossing this chaussee, we were immediately struck with the
extraordinary policy of Bonaparte, in attacking the Russian army posted
on the heights of Laon, where his only retreat was by the narrow road
we were traversing, which for several miles, ran through a morass,
impassible for carriages or artillery. This appeared the more wonderful,
as the army he was attacking was more numerous than his own, composed of
admirable troops, and posted in a position where little hopes of success
could be entertained. It was an error of the same kind as he committed
at Leipsic, when he gave battle to the allied armies with a single
bridge and a long defile in his rear. It is laid down as one of the
first maxims of war, by Frederic the Great, "never to fight an enemy
with a bridge or defile in