Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig | Page 2

the Russian colonel
Orloff, who had pushed forward with his Cossacks to the distance of
about 20 miles, entreating him to release the place from its troublesome
guests. He complied with the invitation; and every Frenchman who had
not been able to escape, and fancied himself secure in the houses, was
driven from his hiding-place, and delivered up to the Cossacks, who
were received with unbounded demonstrations of joy.
About this time a Prussian corps began to be formed in Silesia, under
the denomination of the Corps of Revenge. It was composed of
volunteers, who bound themselves by an oath not to lay down their
arms till Germany had recovered her independence. On the occupation
of Leipzig by the allies, this corps received a great accession of strength
from that place, where it joined by the greater number of the students at
the university, and by the most respectable young men of the city, and
other parts of Saxony. The people of Leipzig moreover availed
themselves of every opportunity to make subscriptions for the allied
troops, and large sums were raised on these occasions. Their
mortification was sufficiently obvious when the French, after the battle
of Lützen, again entered the city. Those who had so lately welcomed

the Russians and Prussians with the loudest acclamations now turned
their backs on their pretended friends; nay, such was the general
aversion, that many strove to get out of the way, that they might not see
them.
This antipathy was well known to Bonaparte by means of his spies,
who were concealed in the town, and he took care to resent it. When,
among others, the deputies of the city of Leipzig, M. Frege, aulic
counsellor, M. Dufour, and Dr. Gross, waited upon him after the battle
of Lützen, he expressed himself in the following terms respecting the
corps of revenge: _Je sais bien que c'est chez vous qu'on a formé ce
corps de vengeance, mais qui enfin n'est qu'une poliçonnerie qui n'a eté
bon à rien._ It was on this occasion also that the deputies received from
the imperial ruffian one of those insults which are so common with him,
and which might indeed be naturally expected from such an upstart; for,
when they assured him of the submission of the city, he dismissed them
with these remarkable words: Allez vous en! than which nothing more
contemptuous could be addressed to the meanest beggar.
It was merely to shew his displeasure at the Anti-Gallican sentiments of
the city, that Napoleon, after his entrance into Dresden, declared
Leipzig in a state of siege; in consequence of which the inhabitants
were obliged to furnish gratuitously all the requisitions that he thought
fit to demand. In this way the town, in a very short time, was plundered
of immense sums, exclusively of the expense of the hospitals, the
maintenance of which alone consumed upwards of 30,000 dollars per
week. During this state of things the French, from the highest to the
lowest, seemed to think themselves justified in wreaking upon the
inhabitants the displeasure of their emperor; each therefore, after the
example of his master, was a petty tyrant, whose licentiousness knew
no bounds.
By such means, and by the immense assemblage of troops which began
to be formed about the city at the conclusion of September 1813, its
resources were completely exhausted, when the series of sanguinary
engagements between the 14th and the 19th of the following month
reduced it to the very verge of destruction. In addition to the pathetic

details of the extreme hardships endured by the devoted inhabitants of
the field of battle, which extended to the distance of ten English miles
round Leipzig, contained in the following sheets, I shall beg leave to
introduce the following extract of a letter, written on the 22d November,
by a person of great commercial eminence in that city, who, after
giving a brief account of those memorable days of October, thus
proceeds:--
"By this five days' conflict our city was transformed into one vast
hospital, 56 edifices being devoted to that purpose alone. The number
of sick and wounded amounted to 36,000. Of these a large proportion
died, but their places were soon supplied by the many wounded who
had been left in the adjacent villages. Crowded to excess, what could be
the consequence but contagious diseases? especially as there was such
a scarcity of the necessaries of life--and unfortunately a most
destructive nervous fever is at this moment making great ravages
among us, so that from 150 to 180 deaths commonly occur in one week,
in a city whose ordinary proportion was between 30 and 40. In the
military hospitals there die at least 300 in a day, and frequently from 5
to 600. By this extraordinary mortality the numbers there have been
reduced