to fix with the least confidence upon any number as a medium.  By what standard, indeed, can you judge of a force rated by some at 150,000, by others at 400,000 men?  They unanimously agreed, on the other hand, that the allies would be opposed by fifteen corps, exclusively of the guards.  I had an opportunity of forming a tolerably correct estimate of one division of Marmont’s corps, which consisted at the utmost of 4000, so that the whole might amount to 12,000 men; and it was one of those which, in comparison of others, had sustained the least loss.  Even that of Augereau, which was incontestably the most complete, as it had just come out of cantonments, was computed at scarcely 15,000 men.  If, then, we take 10,000 for the average, the total amount of the French armies collected near Leipzig, as the wrecks only of several were then remaining, can scarcely have reached 170,000, even including the guards.  Such a force, however, commanded by so many generals who had heretofore been acknowledged the ablest in Europe, together with wore than 600 pieces of artillery, was still fully sufficient to make itself respected, and even feared, by an enemy of double its number.  One single species of troops alone was below mediocrity:—­the cavalry, both in regard to the horses and the men, the former from weakness and want of sustenance, and the latter from ignorance of their business.  With the force of the allies we are yet unacquainted, but at all events they must have been more numerous.

The 14th of October at length dawned.  It had preceded by several rainy days; but this was merely lowering.  The cannon thundered at intervals towards Liebertwolkwitz.  In the forenoon wounded French, chiefly cavalry, kept coming in singly.  With whom they had been engaged they knew not—­Cossacks, of course.  We looked forward with certainty to a general engagement.  It became every hour more dangerous for the inquisitive to venture out or in at the gates.  There was no end to the marching of horse and foot and the rolling of carriages; at every ten paces you met in all directions with corps de garde, by whom every non-military person without distinction was ordered back, sometimes with fair words, and at others with rudeness.  Several couriers had been sent forward to announce the speedy arrival of the king of Saxony and Napoleon.  The hero of the age, as he has been styled, actually came about noon, not, as we anticipated, by the Dresden road, but by that from Berlin.  He passed hastily through the city, and out at the farthest Grimma gate, attended by some battalions and squadrons of his guards.  A camp-chair and a table were brought in all haste, and a great watch-fire kindled in the open field; not far from the gallows.  The guards bivouacked on the right and left.  The emperor took possession of the head-quarters prepared for him, which were any thing but magnificent, being surrounded only by the relics of the stalks and leaves of the cabbages