In the royal stalls a great uproar arose, as they fought with each other for the horses that were there. The strongest leaped on them and rode off furiously, to carry into other neighborhoods the terror and dismay which marked the track of the Austrians through Berlin. Even the hospitals were not safe from their brutal rage. They tore the sick from their beds, drove them with scoffs and insults into the streets, cut up their beds, and covered them over with the feathers. And all this was committed not by wild barbarians, but by the regular troops of a civilized state, by Austrians, who were spurred on, by their hatred of the Prussians, to deeds of rude cruelty and beastly barbarity. And this unlucky national hatred, which possessed the Austrian and made him forgetful of all humanity, was communicated, like an infectious plague, to the Saxons, and transformed these warriors, who were celebrated for being, next to the Prussians, the most orderly and best disciplined, into rude Jack Ketches and iconoclastic Vandals.
In the royal pleasure-palace at Charlottenburg, where Brühl's (Saxon) dragoons had taken up their quarters by force, they set up a new species of dragoonade, which was directed not so much against the living as against marble statues and the sacred treasures of art. All the articles of splendor, brilliancy, and luxury which had been heaped up here, every thing which the royal love of the fine arts had collected of what was beautiful and rare, was sacrificed to their raging love of destruction. Gilded furniture, Venetian mirrors, large porcelain vases from Japan, were smashed to pieces. The silk tapestry was torn from the walls in shreds, the doors inlaid with beautiful wood-mosaic were broken up with clubs, the most masterly and costly paintings were cut in ribbons with knives. To be sure, it sometimes happened that the officers rescued from the soldiers some costly vase, some rare treasure or painting, and saved it from destruction, but this was not to save the King of Prussia's property, but to appropriate it to themselves, and carry it home with them.
Even the art-collection of Count Polignac, embracing the most splendid and rare treasures of art in the palace of Charlottenburg, did not escape this mania of destruction. This collection, containing among other things the most beautiful Greek statues, had been purchased in Rome by Gotzkowsky, and had afforded the king peculiar gratification, and was a source of much enjoyment to him. In the eyes of some Saxon officers, to whom this fact was known, it was sufficient reason for its condemnation. They themselves led the most violent and destructive of their soldiers into the halls where these magnificent treasures were exposed, even helped them to break the marble statues, to dash them down from their pedestals, to hew off their heads, arms, and legs, and even carried their systematic malice so far as to order the soldiers to grind into powder the fragments, so as to prevent any restoration of the statues at a subsequent period.
The unfortunate inhabitants of Charlottenburg witnessed all this abomination that was perpetrated in the royal palace with fear and trembling, and in order to save their own persons and property from similar outrage, they offered the enemy a contribution of fifteen thousand dollars. The Saxons accepted the money, but, regardless of every obligation usually considered sacredly binding, they only became more savage and ferocious. With yells of rage they rushed into the houses, and, when the money they demanded was refused them, they stripped the men of their clothes, lashed them until the blood flowed, or cruelly wounded or maimed them with sabre-cuts; and when the women fled from them, they followed them up, and forced them by brutal ill-treatment to yield themselves. No house in Charlottenburg escaped being plundered; and so cruel were the tortures which the inhabitants suffered, that four of the unfortunate men died a miserable death at the hands of the Saxon soldiers.
They were Germans who waged against their brother Germans, against their own countrymen, a brutality and barbarous love of destruction almost unequalled in the annals of modern history. Consequently it seemed but natural that the Russians should be excited by such examples of barbarity, so unstintedly set them by the Austrians and Saxons. No wonder that they, too, at last began to rob and plunder, to break into houses at night, and carry off women and maidens by force, in order to have them released next day by heavy ransom; and that even the severe punishments, inflicted on those whom the people had the courage to complain of to the generals lost their terror, and were no restraint on these sons of the steppes and ice-fields, led away as they were by the other ruffians.
Two hundred and eighty-two houses were destroyed and thoroughly plundered in Berlin by the Austrians; the Saxons had devastated the royal palace in Charlottenburg, and the whole town. Should not the Russians also leave a memorial of their vandalism? They did so in Schönhausen, the pleasure-palace of the consort of Frederick the Great, who had left it a few days previous, by express command of the king, to take up her residence in Magdeburg. Eight Russian hussars forced themselves into the palace, and, with terrible threats, demanded the king's plate. Only the castellan and his wife, and a few of the royal servants, had been left behind to protect the place, and the only answer they could make to the furious soldiers was, that the booty which they were in search of had been carried with the royal party to Magdeburg. This information excited their fury to the highest pitch. Like the Saxon dragoons of Charlottenburg, they devastated the Schönhausen palace, stripped the castellan and his wife, and, with shouts of wild laughter, whipped them and pinched their flesh with red-hot tongs. And, as if the sight of these bloody and torn human bodies had only increased their desire for blood and torture, they then attacked the two servants, stripped them of their clothes, cut one to pieces like a beast, and threw the other on the red-hot coals, roasting him alive, as formerly the warriors of her Most Christian Majesty of Spain did those whom, in the pride of their civilization, they denominated "the wild heathen."[1]
[Footnote 1: The account of all these cruelties and this vandalism is verified in the original, by reference to Von Archenholz: "History of the Seven Years' War," pp.194-198.—TRANSLATOR.]
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