Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 12.djvu/124

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LEIPZIG. 110 LEIPZIG. except to the north of the town, where BlUcher forced his way nearer to the town walls. Napo- leon proposed an arniistiee to the Austrian Emperor, but received no answer from the Allies, wlio were encouraged by Bliicher's victory and expected to renew the contest on the following day with their forces increased to about 280.000 men by the arrival of a Russian army of 40,000 men under Bennigsen, two Austrian divisions under C'olloreilo. and the Army of the North under Beniadotte. Though all hope of victory was gone. Napoleon, whose forces after the ar- rival of Kegnier amounted to about 150,000 troops. inexi)licably neglected the opjxirtunity to efTect his retreat by the way of Lindenau. and contented himself with drawing his lines closer (o the town, swinging his army slightly to the north so as to form a curve facing almost due east. To the north on his extreme left was Ney, between whom and Macdonald was the corps of Regnier with the Saxon troops; the centre was held by Victor, Lauriston, and Auge- reau, with the Old and the Young Guard and Murafs cavalry; on the right were the Poles under Poniatowski. The battle of the 18th in- volved no remarkable principles of strategj' on either side, but developed into a nuirdermis con- flict between dense bodies of men crowded together in the streets of the numerous villages surrounding T^eipzig, and ex]iosed for hours to the devastating tire of artillery. On the right and centre the French helil" their own against the divisions of Colloredo, Kleist. and Witt- genstein, the fighting being especially obstinate around the villages of Probstheida. where Napoleon held command. The village of Stiit- teritz was bravely defended by Macdonald against the troops of Bennigsen. But on the left Ney could not hold out against the forces of Bliicher, Bagration. and Bernadotte, and at a critical moment the Saxons in Regnier's corps stationed at Paunsdorf went over to the enemy. Ney was forced to fall back on the town, in spite of reenforcements dispatched by Napoleon. The retreat, however, was stubborn, though in the face of a treniendous cannon fire, the village of Schiinfeld being taken and retaken seven times. With niirhtfall the French retreated into the city, hard pressed by the enemy. There was heavy fighting in the suburbs and at the gates far into the niglit. and the contest was resumed in the early morning of October Iflth. On the part of the French no adequate preparations had l)een made for effecting a safe retreat, and as division after division of the ex- hausted troops abandoned the defense of the town to ioin in the line of march, the streets of Leipzig became choked with fugitives, the only means nf escape from the town being by a solitary bridge across the Elster. Owing to a misun<lerstanding of orders, this bridge was blown vi by a French sergeant before the rear guard had crossed, and 15,000 men were left in the hands of the enemy. 7.,arge numbers were drowned in attempting to swim the Elster, among these being Prince Poniatowski. At noon the allied nionarchs made their entry into Leipzig. The losses of the .llies in the battle are esti- mated at about 5.'!.000 in dead and wounded, of which the Prussians lost Ifi.fino, the Anstrians 14. .500, and the Russians 21.!l0n. The French lost 15,000 in dead. 15.000 wounded. 25,000 prisoners, and 2.'?,000 men left behind in the hospitals. The battle of Leipzig effectively shat- tered the power of Napoleon, and though his genius never shone more brightly than in liis masterly retreat across Germany and his defense of the frontier of France., his fall had been rendered inevitable by the issue of this battle. Consult : Jomini, Life of XajHileon, vol. iv. (New York, 18(i4) ; Gerlaeh, Die tichlacht bei LciiKi(j (new ed., Leipzig, 1892). LEIPZIG, CoLLoqiY of. An attempt in the first half of the seventeenth century to reconcile Lutherans and Calvinists. A conference was proposed by the theologians of Hesse and Bran- denburg to those of Leipzig. The Elector .John George of Saxony having sanctioned the plan of a private conference, the meetings commenced March .3, 1031, at the residence of the upper Court preacher, and, under his presidency, were held daily until March 2.'5d. The Confession of Augs- burg was adopted as a basis, and every article examined separately. They agreed on articles V. to vii. and xii. to x.wiii., but dilVcred as to iii., the Lutherans maintaining that not only the divine but the human nature of Christ pos- sessed omniscience, omnipotence, etc., by virtue of the union of the two natures in His person, and that the glory which Christ received was only by His human nature; the Reformed theolo- gians, on the contrary, denied that Christ, as man, was omniscient and omnipresent. On the tenth article they could not agree, the Reformed denying the physical participation in the body and blood of Christ in the eucliarist, and as- serting a spiritual participation by faith. On the article concerning election, the Reformed based election *in the will of God, and reproba- tion on the unbelief of man; while the Lutherans regarded election as the result of God's prescience of the faith of the elect. No decided and permanent benefit resulted from the colloquy. LEIPZIG, Univer.sity of. After Berlin and Munich, the largest university of (ierniany, and next to Heidelberg the oldest within the limits of the present German Emp're. It was estab- lished by the secession of the German stu- dents from Prague as one of the results of the Hussite agitation there. (See Prague, XTniver- siTY OF.) The reorganization of that university in 1400 in favor of the Bohemian and at the expense of the German element led to the seces- sion of the Germans, most of whom, with forty teachers, accepted the invitation of Frederick the Quarrelsome of Jleissen.and his brother William, and settled at Leipzig, establisliing there a uni- versity modeled on that of Prague. Two colleges or houses, the collcfiiiini mnjnn and the coUefjium minus, were provided by the rulers, and the students were divided into four nations — Meissen, Saxony. Bavaria, and Poland. The humanistic movement here was early popvilar, and Later the Reformation affected the university greatly, as it came under the influence of Mel.anchthon about L5.39. The promulgation of the statutes of 15.59, which greatly lowered the standards of the in- stitution, closed the period of prosperity, and the university changed little from that time till 1830. .s a result, this was a time of almost entire stagnation. Since the thorough reorgani- zation in the latter year, however. Leipzig hag taken the high rank it now holds among the German universities. It had in 1901 a budget of nearly 2.500.000 marks and over 3700 stu- dents in theology-, law, medicine, and philosophy.