ed, moreover, security to
persons and property after the place should be taken, and to enforce as
rigid discipline as it was possible on such an occasion. To these
assurances they annexed the condition that no French should be secreted
in the city, declaring that every house in which one or more of them
should be found would run the risk of being reduced to ashes. The
cannon, though only in a proportionably small number from the north and
east, immediately began to play. They were partly directed against the
palisades at the gates, partly against the French artillery which
defended the avenues. For more than two hours balls and shells from the
east and north frequently fell in the city itself, and in the suburbs.
Many a time I was filled with astonishment at the effects of one single
ball, which often penetrated through two thick walls, and pursued its
course still farther. Though they seldom fell in the streets, it was
impossible to venture abroad without imminent hazard of life, as these
tremendous visitors beat down large fragments of roofs, chimneys, and
walls, which, tumbling with a frightful crash, threatened to bury every
passenger beneath their ruins. Still greater havoc was made by the
shells, which, bursting as soon as they had descended, immediately set
their new habitations in flames. Fortunately for us, but few of these
guests were sent into the city. The most that fell came from the north,
that is, in the direction of Halle. Three times did fires break out in
the Bruehl, which, in a short consumed several back buildings contiguous
to the city wall, and nothing but the instantaneous measures adopted for
their extinction prevented farther damage. The allies had no other
object, in dispatching these ministers of destruction, than to shew the
retreating enemy, who, in the general confusion and bustle, could no
longer move either forward or backward, that, if they now forbore to
annihilate him, it was because the innocent citizens might be involved
in equal destruction with the fugitives. Pfaffendorf, a farm-house near
the north side of the city, had previously been set on fire, when the
Russian jaegers had penetrated thither through the Rosenthal, and was
consumed to the very walls. As this place had been converted into an
hospital, many poor fellows there fell a sacrifice to the flames.

You may easily conceive the sensations of the inhabitants of the upper
town when we beheld the black clouds of smoke rising