rs, and carried along rapidly over a rough
and unequal declivity, in the midst of heaps of men, they ground to
powder the poor wretches who were unlucky enough to get between them;
after which, the greater part, driving violently against each other and
getting overturned, killed in their fall those who surrounded them.
Whole rows of these desperate creatures being pushed against these
obstacles, got entangled among them, were thrown down and crushed to
pieces by masses of other unfortunates who succeeded each other
uninterruptedly.

Crowds of them were rolling in this way, one over the other, nothing was
heard but cries of rage and suffering. In this frightful medley, those
who were trod under and stifled, struggled under the feet of their
companions, whom they laid hold of with their nails and teeth, and by
whom they were repelled without mercy, as if they had been enemies.

Among them were wives and mothers, calling in vain, and in tones of
distraction, for their husbands and their children, from whom they had
been separated but a moment before, never more to be united: they
stretched out their arms and entreated to be allowed to pass in order to
rejoin them; but being carried backwards and forwards by the crowd, and
overcome by the pressure, they sunk under without being even remarked.
Amidst the tremendous noise of a furious hurricane, the firing of
cannon, the whistling of the storm and of the bullets, the explosion of
shells, vociferations, groans, and the most frightful oaths, this
infuriated and disorderly crowd heard not the complaints of the victims
whom 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, and whom
they again trod down in their attempts to reach it. When at last they
got to the narrow defile, they fancied they were safe, but the fall of a
horse, or the breaking or displacing of a plank again stopped all.

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 again embarrassed and retarded the clearance. Then it was, that in
that column of desperadoes, crowded together on that single plank of
safety, there arose an internal struggle, in which the weakest and worst
situated were thrown into the river by the strongest. The latter,
without turning their heads, and carried away by the instinct of
self-preservat