s ranks round the
town from the fatigues of the long and sanguinary conflict. Part of the
army equipage entered, and all the streets were soon crowded to such
excess that you could scarcely stir but at the risk of your life. The
allied monarchs alighted in the market-place, where the concourse of
guards and equipages was consequently immense. Here I saw the late
French commandant of the city coming on foot with a numerous retinue of
officers and commissaries, and advancing towards the Russian generals.
The fate of general Bertrand was certainly most to be pitied; he was a
truly honest man, who had no share in those inexpressible miseries in
which we had been for the last six months involved. I felt so much the
less for the commissaries, whom I have ever considered as the Pandora's
box of the French army, whence such numberless calamities have spread
over every country in which they have set foot. At the residence of our
sovereign I observed no other alteration than that a great number of
Saxon generals and officers were collected about it. The life
grenadier-guards were on duty as before, and a battalion of Russian
grenadiers was parading in front of the windows. No interview, that I
know of, took place between the king of Saxony the allied sovereigns.
The king of Prussia remained here longest in conversation with the
prince-royal. The emperors of Austria and Russia, as well as the
crown-prince of Sweden, returned early to the army. After the departure
of the Prussian monarch, our king set out under a strong escort of
Cossacks for Berlin, or, as some asserted, for Schwedt.

The French hospitals which we had constantly had here since the
beginning of the year, and which, since the battle of Luetzen and the
denunciation of the armistice, had increased to such a degree as to
contain upwards of 20,000 sick and wounded, may be considered as a
malignant cancer, that keeps eating farther and farther, and consuming
the vital juices. It was these that introduced among us a dreadfully
destructive nervous fever, which had increased the mortality of the
inhabitants to near double its usual amount. Regarded in this point of
view alone, they were one of the most terrible scourges of the city; but
they proved a still more serious evil, inasmuch as the whole expense of
them fell upon the circle. The French never inquired whence the
prodigious funds requisite for their maintenance were to be derived, nor
ever thought of making the small