h, when he
encountered the strongest resistance at all points which he had probably
deemed the weakest. From that day all his measures were calculated only
for the moment. He boasted of victory when the battle was scarcely
begun. He every where strove to check the impetuous advance of his foes
at the expense of those means which were so necessary for his own
retreat. It could not be difficult for Napoleon to foresee, on the 16th,
that, in case he should be defeated, he had no other route left than to
retreat westward, in the direction of Luetzen and Merseburg. He
nevertheless caused all the bridges over the numerous muddy streams on
that side to be destroyed, instead of diligently providing temporary
ones in addition. He was acquainted with the situation of the city,
through the centre of which he would be obliged to pass. He knew the
position of his army, which might, indeed, enter it by three spacious
roads, from north, east, and south; but had only one outlet, and this
the very narrowest of all, for itself and its train, many miles in
length. Let the reader figure to himself a routed army, and that a
French army, in which all order is so easily lost, converging in three
columns to one common centre. The passage at the outermost gate towards
Luetzen is so narrow as to admit only one single waggon at a time. When
we consider that at the Kuhthurm again the road is but just wide enough
for one carriage; that, on the west side of the city, the Elster, the
Pleisse, and their different branches, intersect with their thousand
meanders the marshy plains covered with wood, which are scarcely
passable for the pedestrian; when we farther consider the incessant
stoppages of the whole train at every little obstacle, and figure to
ourselves all the three columns united in a road, the two principal
passes of which are scarcely 30 feet in breadth; we shall rather be
astonished that the whole French army was not annihilated than surprised
at the prodigious quantity of waggons and artillery which it was obliged
to abandon. Even in the night between the 18th and 19th, when Napoleon
must have been perfectly aware of his situation, there would still have
been time to throw bridges across the different streams, so that the
army might have marched in five or six columns to Lindenau, and been
again collected at this place, from which several convenient roads
branch off. Such dispositions as circumstances required might then have
been made, an