Napoleon, in killed, wounded, and prisoners, lost at Leipsig at least 50,000 men.

The retreat of the French through Saxony was accompanied with every disaster which a hostile peasantry, narrowness of supplies, and the persevering pursuit of the Cossacks and other light troops could inflict on a disordered and disheartened mass of men.  The soldiers moved on, while under the eye of Napoleon, in gloomy silence:  wherever he was not present, they set every rule of discipline at nought, and were guilty of the most frightful excesses.  The Emperor conducted himself as became a great mind amidst great misfortunes.  He appeared at all times calm and self-possessed; receiving, every day that he advanced, new tidings of evil.

He halted for two days at Erfurt, where extensive magazines had been established, employing all his energies in the restoration of discipline:  and would have remained longer, had he not learned that the victors of Leipsig were making progress on either flank of his march, while the Bavarians (so recently his allies), reinforced by some Austrian divisions, were moving rapidly to take post between him and the Rhine.  He resumed his march, therefore, on the 25th.  It was here that Murat quitted the army.  Notwithstanding the unpleasant circumstances under which he had retired to Naples in January, Joachim had reappeared when the Emperor fixed his headquarters at Dresden in the summer, and served with his usual gallantry throughout the rest of the campaign.  The state of Italy now demanded his presence; and the two brothers-in-law, after all their differences, embraced each other warmly and repeatedly at parting—­as if under a mutual presentiment that they were parting to meet no more.

The Austro-Bavarians had taken up a position amidst the woods near Hanau before the Emperor approached the Mayne.  He came up with them in the morning of the 30th, and his troops charged on the instant with the fury of desperation.  Buonaparte cut his way through ere nightfall; and Marmont, with the rear, had equal success on the 31st.  In these actions there fell 6000 of the French; but the enemy had 10,000 killed or wounded, and lost 4000 prisoners, and these losses would have been far greater but for the ready wit of a patriotic miller, who, watching the tide of battle, suddenly let the water into his mill-stream, and thus interposed a seasonable obstacle between the French cavalry and some German infantry, whom they had been driving before them; a service which the King of Prussia subsequently rewarded with munificence.

The pursuit on the road which Napoleon adopted had been entrusted to the Austrians, who urged it with far less vigour than the Prussians under the fiery guidance of Blucher would probably have exerted.  No considerable annoyance, therefore, succeeded to the battle of Hanau.  The relics of the French host at length passed the Rhine; and the Emperor having quitted them at Mentz, arrived in Paris on the 9th of November.