. In one instance a troop
of one hundred Prussians surrendered to four French dragoons, who
conducted their prisoners to headquarters; and once a large detachment
hailed in a loud voice a few mounted grenadiers, who intended perhaps to
escape from their superior force, and gave the latter to understand, by
signals and laying down their arms, that they only wished to surrender
and deliver themselves to the French.

The Prussians had reached Jena and Auerstadt confident of victory, and
now had left the battle-field to carry the terrible tidings of their
defeat, like a host of ominously croaking ravens, throughout Germany.

The battle-field, on which a few hours previously Death had walked in a
triumphant procession, and felled thousands and thousands of bleeding
victims to the ground, was now entirely deserted. Night had thrown its
pall over the horrors of this Calvary of Prussian glory: the howling
storm alone sang a requiem to the unfortunate soldiers, who, with open
wounds and features distorted with pain, lay in endless rows on the
blood-stained ground.

At length the night of horror is over--the storm dies away--the thick
veil of darkness is rent asunder, and the sun of a new day arises pale
and sad; pale and sad he illuminates the battle-field, reeking with the
blood of so many thousands.

What a spectacle! How many mutilated corpses lie prostrate on the ground
with their dilated eyes staring at the sky--and among them, the happy,
the enviable! how many living, groaning, bleeding men, writhing with
pain, unable to raise their mutilated bodies from the gory bed of
torture and death!

The sun discloses the terrible picture hidden by the pall of night; it
illuminates the faces of the stark dead, but awakens the living and
suffering, the wounded and bleeding, from their benumbed slumber, and
recalls them to consciousness and the dreadful knowledge of their
wretched existence.

With consciousness return groans and wails; and the dreadful conviction
of their wretched existence opens their lips, and wrings from them
shrieks of pain and despair.

How enviable and blissful sleep the dead whose wounds bleed and ache no
longer! How wretched and pitiable are the living as they lie on the
ground, tortured by the wounds which the howling night wind has dried so
that they bleed no more! Those poor deserted ones in the valley and on
the hills the sun has awakened, and the air resounds with their moans
and cries and despair