living and the dead. We only laid them
on the straw in the carts.

I knew how all this was, for I was at Lutzen, and I understand what a
man suffers in recovering from a ball, or a musket-shot, or such a cut
as our cuirassiers made.

Every time I saw one of these men taken up, I thanked God that I was
not reduced to that condition, and, thinking that the same thing might
befall me, I said to myself: "You do not know how many balls and slugs
have been near you, or you would be horrified." I was astonished that
so many of us had escaped in the carnage, which had been far greater
than at Lutzen or even at Leipzig. The battle had only lasted five
hours, and the dead in many places were piled two or three feet deep.
The blood flowed from under them in streams. Through the principal
street where the artillery went, the mud was red with blood, and the
mud itself was crushed flesh and bones.

It is necessary to tell you this, in order that the young men may
understand. I shall fight no more, thank God, I am too old, but all
these young men who think of nothing but war, instead of being
industrious and helping their aged parents, should know how the
soldiers are treated. Let them imagine what the poor fellows who have
done their duty think, as they lie in the street, wanting an arm or a
leg, and hear the cannon, weighing twelve or fifteen thousand pounds,
coming with their big well-shod horses, plunging and neighing.

Then it is that they will recall their old parents who embraced them in
their own village, while they went off saying:

"I am going, but I shall return with the cross of honor, and with my
epaulettes."

Yes, indeed! if they could weep and ask God's pardon, we should hear
their cries and complaints, but there is no time for that; the cannon
and the caissons with their freight of bombs and bullets arrive--and
they can hear their own bones crack beforehand--and all pass right over
their bodies, just as they do through the mud.

When we are old, and think that such horrible things may happen to the
children we love, we feel as if we would part with the last sou before
we would allow them to go.

But all this does no good, bad men cannot be changed, while good ones
must do their duty, and if misfortune comes, their confidence in the
justice of God remains. Such men do not destroy their fellows from the
love of glory, they are forced to do so, they have nothing with which
to reproach themselves, they def