attempted to pass by the other bridge. A great number of
large ammunition wagons, heavy carriages and cannon crowded to it from
all parts. Pressed on by their drivers and carried rapidly along over a
rough and unequalled declivity, in the midst of masses of men, they
ground to pieces the poor wretches who were unfortunate enough to get
between them, until at length the greater part, furiously encountering
each other, were overturned, killing in their fall those who were around
them. Multitudes pressed against these obstacles, and becoming entangled
among them, were thrown down, and crushed to pieces by other multitudes
as they successively stumbled upon them.

Thus these miserable creatures were rolling one upon the other, and
nothing was heard but cries of rage and of anguish. In this frightful
confusion, those who were trodden and crushed under the feet of their
companions, struggling to lay hold of them with their nails and teeth,
were, like so many enemies, trampled upon without mercy.

Among them were wives and mothers, calling in tones of distraction upon
their husbands and their children, from whom they had been separated but
a moment before, never again to be united. Stretching out their arms,
they entreated to be allowed to pass in order to rejoin them: but they
were hurried backward and forward with the crowd, until at length,
overcome by the pressure, they sank without being so much as noticed.
Amid the howling of a violent tempest, the discharge of cannon, the
whistling of balls, the explosion of shells, vociferations, groans, and
frightful oaths, this infuriated crowd heard not the cries of the
victims it was swallowing up.

The more fortunate gained the bridge by scrambling over heaps of
wounded, of women and children thrown down and half suffocated, whom
they again trampled beneath their feet in their attempts to reach it.
When at last they reached the narrow defile, they fancied that they were
safe; but the fall of a horse, or the breaking or displacing of a plank,
again arrested everything.

There was also at the outlet of the bridge, on the other side, a morass,
into which many horses and carriages had sunk, a circumstance which
greatly embarrassed and retarded the entrance. Then it was that, in that
infuriated column, crowded together, on a single plank of safety, there
arose a terrible struggle, in which the weakest least fortunately
situated were plunged into the river by their more powerful or