The news was correct.  Five days earlier, the King of Bavaria had come to terms with Austria, offering to place 36,000 troops at her disposal, while she, in return, guaranteed his complete sovereignty and a full territorial indemnity for any districts that he might be called on to restore to the Hapsburgs.[371] Napoleon knew not as yet the full import of the news, and it is quite incorrect to allege, as some heedless admirers have done, that this was the only thing that stayed his conquering march northwards.[372] His retreat to Leipzig was arranged before he heard the first rumour as to Bavaria’s defection.  But the tidings saddened his men on their miry march southwards; and, strange to say, the Emperor published it to all his troops at Leipzig on the 15th, giving it as the cause why they were about to fall back on the Rhine.

There was much to depress the Emperor when, on the 14th, he drew near to Leipzig.  With him came the King and Queen of Saxony, who during the last days had resignedly moved along in the tail of this comet, which had blasted their once smiling realm.  Outside the city they parted, the royal pair seeking shelter under its roofs, while the Emperor pressed on to Murat’s headquarters near Wachau.  There, too the news was doubtful.  The King of Naples had not, on that day, shown his old prowess.  Though he disposed of larger masses of horsemen than those which the allies sent out to reconnoitre, he chose his ground of attack badly, and led his brigades in so loose an array that, after long swayings to and fro, the fight closed with advantage to the allies.[373] It was not without reason that Napoleon on that night received his Marshals rather coolly at his modest quarters in the village of Reudnitz.  Leaning against the stove, he ran over several names of those who were now slack in their duty; and when Augereau was announced, he remarked that he was not the Augereau of Castiglione.  “Ah! give me back the old soldiers of Italy, and I will show you that I am,” retorted the testy veteran.

As a matter of fact, Napoleon was not the old Napoleon, not even the Napoleon of Dresden.  There he had overwhelmed the 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.