Woe to those who had remained, their number was about 10 thousand, besides 5 thousand sick in the hospitals.
According to Roeder, 500 were murdered in the streets on this day, partly by Cossacks, partly by Jews, the latter revenging themselves for ill treatment.
All reports, and they are numerous, of Germans, French and also Russians, speak of the cruelty of the Jews of Wilna. We must not forget, however, the provocations under which they had to suffer, nor how they, in supplying soldiers with eatables and clothing, saved many who otherwise would have perished.
Von Lossberg says that Christian people of Wilna have also taken part in the massacre, and only the Poles did not participate.
The Cossacks began their bloody work early in the morning.
Awful cries of the tortured were heard in the Wuerttembergian hospital, telling the sick who were lying there what they themselves had to expect from the entering enemies.
Those who had remained in Smolensk and Moscow after the armed soldiers had departed were at once massacred. In Wilna likewise many were murdered, but the greater number—many thousands—(other circumstances did not permit to do away with all these prisoners in the same way) perished after days or weeks of sickness and privations of all kind.
Wilna’s convents could tell of it if their walls could speak.
Dr. Geissler narrates that the prisoners in the Basilius monastery into which soldiers of all nationalities had been driven, during 13 days received only a little hardtack, but neither wood nor a drop of water; they had to quench their thirst with the snow which covered the corpses in the yard.
The Englishman Wilson, of whom I have spoken already, who had come to Wilna with Kutusow’s army, says: “The Basilius monastery, transformed into a prison, offered a terrible sight—7,500 corpses were piled up in the corridors, and corpses were also in other parts of the building, the broken windows and the holes in the walls were plugged with feet, legs, hands, heads, trunks, just as they would fit in the openings to keep out the cold air. The putrefying flesh spread a terrible stench.”