Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig | Page 3

left a single horse, cow, sheep, hog, fowl, or corn of any kind, either hay or implements of agriculture. All the dwelling-houses have been burned or demolished, and all the wood-work about them carried off for fuel by the troops in bivouac. The roofs have shared the same fate; the shells of the houses were converted into forts and loop-holes made in the walls, as every village individually was defended and stormed. Not a door or window is any where to be seen, as those might be removed with the greatest ease, and, together with the roofs, were all consumed. Winter is now at hand, and its rigours begin already to be felt. These poor creatures are thus prevented, not only by the season, from rebuilding their habitations, but also by the absolute want of means; they have no prospect before them but to die of hunger, for all Saxony, together with the adjacent countries, has suffered far too severely to be able to afford any relief to their miseries.
"Our commercial house, God be thanked I has not been plundered; but every thing in my private house, situated in the suburb of Grimma, was carried off or destroyed, as you may easily conceive, when I inform you that a body of French troops broke open the door on the 19th, and defended themselves in the house against the Prussians. Luckily I had a few days before removed my most valuable effects to a place of safety. I had in the house one killed and two wounded; but, a few doors off, not fewer than 60 were left dead in one single house.--Almost all the houses in the suburbs have been more or less damaged by the shower of balls on the 19th."
That these pictures of the miseries occasioned by the sanguinary conflict which sealed the emancipation of the Continent from Gallic despotism are not overcharged is proved by the concurrent testimony of all the other accounts which have arrived from that quarter. Among the rest a letter received by the publisher, from the venerable count Sch?nfeld, a Saxon nobleman of high character, rank, and affluence, many years ambassador both at the court of Versailles, before the revolution, and till within a few years at Vienna, is so interesting, that I am confident I shall need no excuse for introducing it entire. His extensive and flourishing estates south-east of Leipzig have been the bloody cradle of regenerated freedom. The short space of a few days has converted them into a frightful desert, reduced opulent villages into smoking ruins; and plunged his Miserable tenants as well as himself into a state of extreme Want, until means can be found again to cultivate the soil and to rebuild the dwellings. He writes as follows:--
"It is with a sensation truly peculiar and extraordinary that I take up my pen to address you, to whom I had, some years since, the pleasure of writing several times on subjects of a very different kind: but it is that very difference between those times and the present, and the most wonderful series of events which have followed each other during that period in rapid succession, the ever-memorable occurrences of the last years and months, the astonishing success which rejoices all Europe, and has nevertheless plunged many thousands into inexpressible misery; it is all this that has long engaged my attention, and presses itself upon me at the moment I am writing. In events like these, every individual, however distant, must take some kind of interest, either as a merchant or a man of letters, a soldier or an artist; or, if none of these, at least as a man. How strongly the late events must interest every benevolent and humane mind I have no need to tell you, who must more feelingly sympathize in them from the circumstance that it is your native country, where the important question, whether the Continent of Europe should continue to wear an ignominious yoke, and whether it deserved the fetters of slavery, because it was not capable of bursting them, has been decisively answered by the greatest and the most sanguinary contest that has occurred for many ages. That same Saxony, which three centuries ago released part of the world from the no less galling yoke of religious bondage; which, according to history, has been the theatre of fifteen great battles; that same Saxony is now become the cradle of the political liberty of the Continent. But a power so firmly rooted could not be overthrown without the most energetic exertions; and, while millions are now raising the shouts of triumph, there are, in Saxony alone, a million of souls who are reduced to misery too severe to be capable of taking any part in the general joy, and who are