he foe by a rapid
concentration. Now nothing decisive was done on the 15th, and time was
thereby given the allies to mature their plans. Early on that day
Bluecher heard that on the morrow Schwarzenberg would attack Leipzig
from the south-east, but would send a corps westwards to threaten it
on the side of Lindenau. The Prussian leader therefore hurried on from
the banks of the Saale, and at night the glare of his watch-fires
warned Marmont that Leipzig would be assailed also from the
north-west. Yet, despite the warnings which Napoleon received from his
Marshal, he refused to believe that the north side was seriously
threatened; and, as late as the dawn of the 16th, he bade his troops
there to be ready to march through Leipzig and throw themselves on the
masses of Schwarzenberg.[374] Had Napoleon given those orders on the
15th, all might have gone well; for all his available forces, except
Ney's and Reynier's corps, were near at hand, making a total of nearly
150,000 men, while Schwarzenberg had as yet not many more. But those
orders on the 16th were not only belated: they contributed to the
defeat on the north side.

The Emperor's thoughts were concentrated on the south. There his lines
stretched in convex front along undulating ground near Wachau and
Liebertwolkwitz, about a league to the south and south-east of the
town. His right was protected by the marshy ground of the small river
Pleisse; his centre stretched across the roads leading towards
Dresden, while his left rested on a small stream, the Parthe, which
curves round towards the north-west and forms a natural defence to the
town on the north. Yet to cautious minds his position seemed unsafe;
he had in his rear a town whose old walls were of no military value, a
town on which several roads converged from the north, east, and south,
but from which, in case of defeat, he could retire westward only by
one road, that leading over the now flooded streams of the Pleisse and
the Elster. But the great captain himself thought only of victory. He
had charged Macdonald and Ney to march from Taucha to his support:
Marmont was to do the same; and, with these concentrated forces acting
against the far more extended array of Schwarzenberg, he counted on
overthrowing him on the morrow, and then crushing the disunited forces
of Bluecher and Bernadotte.[375]

[Illustration: BATTLE OF LEIPZIG]

The Emperor and Murat were riding along the ridge near
Liebertwolkwitz, when, at