your rear: as if you are defeated, the ruin
of the army must ensue in the confusion which the narrowness of the
retreat creates." We cannot suppose so great a general as Bonaparte to
have been ignorant of so established a principle, or a rule which common
sense appears so obviously to dictate; it is more probable, that in the
confidence which the long habit of success had occasioned, he never
contemplated the possibility of a defeat, nor took any measures whatever
for ensuring the safety of his army in the event of a retreat. Be this
as it may, it is certain that he fought at Laon with a morass, crossed
by a single chaussee, in his rear, and that if he had been totally
defeated, instead of being repulsed in the action which then took
place, his army must have been irretrievably ruined, in the narrow line
over which their retreat was of necessity conducted.

At the foot of the hill of Laon is placed a small village named Semilly,
in which a desperate conflict had evidently been maintained. The trees
were riddled with the cannon-shot; the walls were pierced for the fire
of infantry, and the houses all in ruins, from the showers of balls to
which they had been exposed. The steep declivity of the hill itself was
covered with gardens and vineyards, in which the allied army had been
posted during the continuance of the conflict; but though three months
had not elapsed since the period when they were filled with hostile
troops, no traces of desolation were to be seen, nor any thing which
could indicate the occurrence of any extraordinary events. The vines
grew in the utmost luxuriance on the spot where columns of infantry had
so recently stood, and the garden cultivation appeared in all its
neatness, on the very ground which had been lately traversed by all the
apparatus of modern warfare. It would have been impossible for any one
to have conceived, that the destruction they occasioned could so soon
have been repaired; or that the powers of Nature, in that genial
climate, could so rapidly have effaced all traces of the desolation
which marked the track of human ambition.

The town of Laon itself contains little worthy of note; but the view
from its ramparts, though not extensive, was one of the most pleasing
which we had seen in France. The little plain with which the town is
surrounded, is varied with woods, corn fields, and vineyards; the view
is closed on every side by a ridge of hills, which form a circular
boundary round