they inclined their heads to the ground, and fell, in a few minutes, to rise no more!  Scarcely was there sufficient room on the high road for a slender pedestrian to find a passage.  All the fields were covered with troops and baggage.  Even on the place of execution they had erected bivouacs, and not the most inconvenient, because they were there less crowded than in other places.  Except single musket-shots, nothing was to be heard but incessant cries of Serrez!  Serrez! (Closer!  Closer!)—­The dice yet lay in the box, and were not destined to be thrown that day.  It was probably spent in reconnoitring, in order to make up the parties for the grand game in which empires were the stake.  The preparations for the defence of the city became more serious and alarming.  The exterior avenues had been previously palisaded, and provided with chevaux de frise; but the greater part of them were completely closed up.  Loop-holes were formed in every wall, and tirailleurs posted behind them.  In every garden and at every hedge you stumbled upon pickets.  As the inner town is better secured by its strong walls against a first onset, they contented themselves there with sawing holes in the great wooden gates, for the purpose of firing through them.  Every thing denoted the determination not to spare the city in the least, however unfit in itself for a point of defence.  The only circumstance calculated to tranquillize the timid was the presence of our king, for whom, at any rate, Napoleon could not but have some respect.

As there was no appearance of gleaning much information abroad, I now sought a wider prospect upon a steeple.—­So much I had ascertained from all accounts, that it was principally the Austrians who had been engaged the preceding day.  Some hundreds of prisoners had been brought in; the church-yard had been allotted to these poor fellows for their abode, probably that they might study the inscriptions on the grave-stones, and thus be reminded of their mortality.  Nothing was given them to eat, lest they should be disturbed in these meditations.  So far as the telescope would command were to be seen double and triple lines, the end of which the eye sought in vain.  The French army stretched in a vast semicircle from Paunsdorf to Probstheide, and was lost in the woods of Konnewitz.  It occupied therefore a space of more than one German mile (five English miles).  Behind all these lines appeared reserves, who were posted nearer to the city.  On this side the main force seemed to be assembled.  Towards the north and west the ranks were more broken and detached.  Of the armies of the allies, only some divisions could yet be discerned.  The Cossacks were plainly distinguished at a distance of two leagues.  They had the boldness to venture within musket-shot of the French lines, alight, thrust their pikes into the ground, and let their horses run about.  The king of Saxony himself witnessed their audacity whilst in the midst of the French army, about half a league from Leipzig.  A number of these men came unawares upon him; and a Saxon officer, with eighty horse, was obliged to face about against them, till the king had reached a place of safety.  This was the principal reason why he made his entry into the city on horseback.