In the battle of Leipzig we perceive none of that forethought which characterizes his other engagements.  The possibility of losing it seems never to have entered into his calculations; otherwise he would scarcely have endeavoured to prevail upon the king of Saxony to repair to Leipzig to witness his defeat.  In the most favourable event he had a right to anticipate no other result than an unmolested retreat:  the allies however, were producing a very different one from what he expected.  Of this he might have convinced himself so early as the 16th, when he encountered the strongest resistance at all points which he had probably deemed the weakest.  From that day all his measures were calculated only for the moment.  He boasted of victory when the battle was scarcely begun.  He every where strove to check the impetuous advance of his foes at the expense of those means which were so necessary for his own retreat.  It could not be difficult for Napoleon to foresee, on the 16th, that, in case he should be defeated, he had no other route left than to retreat westward, in the direction of Luetzen and Merseburg.  He nevertheless caused all the bridges over the numerous muddy streams on that side to be destroyed, instead of diligently providing temporary ones in addition.  He was acquainted with the situation of the city, through the centre of which he would be obliged to pass.  He knew the position of his army, which might, indeed, enter it by three spacious roads, from north, east, and south; but had only one outlet, and this the very narrowest of all, for itself and its train, many miles in length.  Let the reader figure to himself a routed army, and that a French army, in which all order is so easily lost, converging in three columns to one common centre.  The passage at the outermost gate towards Luetzen is so narrow as to admit only one single waggon at a time.  When we consider that at the Kuhthurm again the road is but just wide enough for one carriage; that, on the west side of the city, the Elster, the Pleisse, and their different branches, intersect with their thousand meanders the marshy plains covered with wood, which are scarcely passable for the pedestrian; when we farther consider the incessant stoppages of the whole train at every little obstacle, and figure to ourselves all the three columns united in a road, the two principal passes of which are scarcely 30 feet in breadth; we shall rather be astonished that the whole French army was not annihilated than surprised at the prodigious quantity of waggons and artillery which it was obliged to abandon.  Even in the night between the 18th and 19th, when Napoleon must have been perfectly aware of his situation, there would still have been time to throw bridges across the different streams, so that the army might have marched in five or six columns to Lindenau, and been again collected at this place, from which several convenient roads branch off.  Such dispositions as circumstances required might then have been made, and the retreat