t
desert, where nothing was to be seen but towns laid waste and
plundered, villages reduced to ashes, naked and famishing
inhabitants;--that there was no appearance of any other living creature;
nay, not even a trace of vegetation remaining. These accounts we
naturally regarded as exaggerations, little imagining that in a short
time we should have to give to our distant friends the same details of
horror respecting our own vicinity. Too true it is that no nation has
made such progress in the art of refinement, and is so ingenious in
devising infernal torments, as that, which, under the name of allies and
protectors, has made us so inexpressibly wretched. Ever since the battle
of Luetzen, Leipzig had been one of the principal resources of the grand
French army, and they showed it no mercy. Numberless hospitals
transformed it into one great infirmary; many thousands of troops,
quartered in the habitations of the citizens, one prodigious _corps de
garde_; and requisitions of meat, bread, rice, brandy, and other
articles, one vast poor-house, where the indigent inhabitants were in
danger of starving. But for this well-stored magazine, the great French
army had long since been obliged to abandon the Elbe. No wonder then
that this point should have been guarded with the utmost care. It
required commissaries and inspectors, such as those who had the control
over our store-houses and granaries, to complete the master-piece, to
reduce that Leipzig, which had once patiently sustained, without being
entirely exhausted, the burdens of a war that lasted seven years--to
reduce it, I say, in six months, to so low an ebb, that even the opulent
were in danger of perishing with hunger; that reputable citizens could
no longer procure the coarsest fare; and that, though their hearts
overflowed with pity and compassion, they were absolutely incapable of
affording the slightest relief, not so much as a crust of bread, to the
sick and wounded soldier. It is impossible to give you any idea of the
dexterity and rapidity with which the French soldiers will so totally
change the look of a village, a field, or a garden, that you shall not
know it again, how well soever you may have been acquainted with it
before. Such was the fate of Leipzig, and of the beautiful environs of
our inner city-walls.

You must know that the bread and forage waggons of a great French army
are destined merely, as they pass through the villages, to receive the
stores co