heir knapsacks and
cartouch-boxes is dashed in pieces and destroyed. Of the truth of this
statement the environs of Leipzig might furnish a thousand proofs. The
most fortunate of the inhabitants were those who in good time removed
their stores and cattle to a place of safety, and left their houses to
their fate. He who neglected this precaution, under the idea that the
presence of the owner would be sufficient to restrain those locusts, of
course lost his all. No sooner had he satisfied one party than another
arrived to renew the demand; and thus they proceeded so long as a morsel
or a drop was left in the house. When such a person had nothing more to
give, he was treated with the utmost brutality, till at length, stripped
of all, he was reluctantly compelled to abandon his home. If you should
chance to find a horse or a cow, here and there, in the country round
our city, imagine not that the animal was spared by French
generosity:--no such thing! the owner must assuredly have concealed it
in some hiding-place, where it escaped the prying eyes of the French
soldiers. Nothing--absolutely nothing--was spared; the meanest bedstead
of the meanest beggar was broken up as well as the most costly furniture
from the apartments of the opulent. After they had slept upon the beds
in the bivouacs, as they could not carry them away, they ripped them
open, consigned the feathers to the winds, and sold the bed-clothes and
ticking for a mere trifle. Neither the ox, nor the calf but two days
old; neither the ewe, nor the lamb scarcely able to walk; neither the
brood-hen, nor the tender chicken, was spared. All were carried off
indiscriminately; whatever had life was slaughtered; and the fields were
covered with calves, lambs, and poultry, which the troops were unable to
consume. The cattle collected from far and near were driven along in
immense herds with the baggage. Their cries for food in all the high
roads were truly pitiable. Often did one of those wretches drive away
several cows from the out-house of a little farmer, who in vain implored
him upon his knees to spare his only means of subsistence, merely to
sell them before his face for a most disproportionate price. Hay, oats,
and every species of corn, were thrown unthreshed upon the ground, where
they were consumed by the horses, or mostly trampled in the dirt; and if
these animals had stood for some days in the stable, and been supplied
with forage by the peasant, the rider had