CHAPTER XVI.

It was exceedingly difficult to find an exit from Leipzig, as this town
was surrounded on every side by the enemy. It had been proposed to the
Emperor to burn the faubourgs which the heads of the columns of the
allied armies had reached, in order to make his retreat more sure; but he
indignantly rejected this proposal, being unwilling to leave as a last
adieu to the King of Saxony his cities abandoned to the flames. After
releasing him from his oath of fidelity, and exhorting him to now
consider only his own interests, the Emperor left him, and directed his
course to the gate of Ramstadt; but he found it so encumbered that it was
an impossibility to clear a passage, and he was compelled to retrace his
steps, again cross the city, and leave it through the northern gate, thus
regaining the only point from which he could, as he intended, march on
Erfurt; that is, from the boulevards on the west. The enemy were not yet
completely masters of the town, and it was the general opinion that it
could have been defended much longer if the Emperor had not feared to
expose it to the horrors of a siege. The Duke of Ragusa continued to
offer strong resistance in the faubourg of Halle to the repeated attacks
of General Blucher; while Marshal Ney calmly saw the combined forces of
General Woronzow, the Prussian corps under the orders of General Billow,
and the Swedish army, break themselves to pieces against his impregnable
defenses.

So much valor was nevertheless at last compelled to yield to numbers, and
above all to treachery; for at the height of the combat before the gates
of Leipzig, a battalion from Baden, which until then had fought valiantly
in the French ranks, suddenly abandoned the gate Saint-Peter, which it
was commissioned to defend, and at the entrance to the city gave itself