But he had hours, we might say days, to settle his destiny, and was not tied down to a moment.  Afterward he had the fairness to admit that he had lost a great opportunity to regain the ascendency in not supporting Vandamme with the whole of the Young Guard.]

When Napoleon was called from the pursuit of Bluecher by Schwarzenberg’s advance upon Dresden, he confided the command of the army that was to act against that of Silesia to Marshal Macdonald, a brave and honest man, but a very inferior soldier, yet who might have managed to hold his own against so unscientific a leader as the fighting old hussar, had it not been for the terrible rainstorm that began on the night of the 25th of August.  The swelling of the rivers, some of them deep and rapid, led to the isolation of the French divisions, while the rain was so severe as to prevent them from using their muskets.  Animated by the most ardent hatred, the new Prussian levies, few of whom had been in service half as long as our volunteers, and many of whom were but mere boys, rushed upon their enemies, butchering them with butt and bayonet, and forcing them into the boiling torrent of the Katzbach.  Puthod’s division was prevented from rejoining its comrades by the height of the waters, and was destroyed, though one of the best bodies in the French army.  The state of the country drove the French divisions together on the same lines of retreat, creating immense confusion, and leading to the most serious losses of men and materiel.  Macdonald’s blunder was in advancing after the storm began, and had lasted for a whole night.  His officers pointed out the danger of his course, but he was one of those men who think, that, because they are not knaves, they can accomplish everything; but the laws of Nature no more yield to honest stupidity than to clever roguery.  The Baron Von Mueffling, who was present in Bluecher’s army, says, that, when the French attempted to protect their retreat at the Katzbach with artillery, the guns stuck in the mud; and he adds,—­“The field of battle was so saturated by the incessant rain, that a great portion of our infantry left their shoes sticking in the mud, and followed the enemy barefoot.”  Even a brook, called the Deichsel, was so swollen by the rain that the French could cross it at only one place, and there they lost wagons and guns.  Old Bluecher issued a thundering proclamation for the encouragement of his troops.  “In the battle on the Katzbach,” he said to them, “the enemy came to meet you with defiance.  Courageously, and with the rapidity of lightning, you issued from behind your heights.  You scorned to attack them with musketry-fire:  you advanced without a halt; your bayonets drove them down the steep ridge of the valley of the raging Neisse and Katzbach.  Afterwards you waded through rivers and brooks swollen with rain.  You passed nights in mud.  You suffered for want of provisions, as the impassable roads and want of conveyance hindered the baggage from following.