“She flung herself upon her knees, and in a shrill voice of desperation, imprecated the most direful curses on our heads. “If,” says she, “you call yourselves men, and not savages of unequalled brutality, either kill me instantly, and end my extreme sufferings; or, O! let me have help to search for the remains of my children.”
“I tenderly exhorted her to calm herself—that she might expect every assistance; and staying with her till my son had returned with a few soldiers, I learnt, that on the alarm of the sudden approach of our troops to the village, the unrestrained disorder which was naturally to be expected, had forced her son and daughter, with two grandchildren, to seek shelter in a cellar of the house; which house sharing the same unfortunate fate with the rest, was soon pillaged and set on fire—that she herself had fled some little way into the country, and had retired from the danger of the enemy, in hopes that, in case of a discovery, her age might secure her from that fate which her grandchildren, two young women in the bloom of life, might otherwise be exposed to—that their father, who was a notary of the place, with his wife, had resolved on staying with the children in their concealment.
“When my son returned with the soldiers, the old woman showed us the spot where we should search for the poor devoted family. We had not been long at work among the ruins, when we broke into the cellar whither the family had fled. Here a scene presented itself, that would have turned a monarch’s heart from the fell tide of war, which brings such desolation and horror in its course.
“Clasped in each others arms lay two beautiful sisters, with their father and mother by their side, suffocated by the smoke; while the old woman, with horrid yells, was bewailing the loss of her unfortunate children, kissing the bodies, and frantic with grief. My son stood with folded arms musing over this melancholy spectacle.
“I solicited him to depart; I urged him to withdraw from so affecting a scene. Sternly did he turn his eyes on me, and seemed petrified to the spot. In vain did I reason on the necessary consequences of war; that it was no premeditated cruelty, but one of those casual misfortunes that even the civil transactions of life are often checquered with.
“Where is your reason, your manhood, my boy? shall a soldier be overcome with weak womanish feelings? for shame! for shame! All men in the course of their lives must make up their minds to calamities like these. Away! Your countrymen will ridicule your want of firmness; and the laurels which you have hitherto acquired, will only serve to point you out as a more conspicuous instance of effeminacy.
“I took him by the arm to draw him gently from this distressing sight, when he flung himself away from me, and exclaimed, pointing to the youngest of the girls, whose tongue, from the convulsive gasps of death, hung from her mouth, “Behold this unparalleled butchery of my countrymen! Will not the wrath of heaven revenge this outrage on humanity? Cruel, cruel Prussians! You are bloody indeed! accursed profession! Hell only has invented thee. From this moment I abjure thee. I will not return to these blood-hounds: I will fly to the desarts for ever, and hide my face from such inhumanity:” with “see there! my father,” pointing again to the dead bodies, and burst into a flood of tears.
“It required some force to bear him from this calamitous scene; and so strong was the impression, that a fixed melancholy took entire possession of him: and such was the extreme delicacy and tenderness of his feelings, that I was destined to see this beloved child seized with a violent fever, and to hear him, in the paroxisms of his distemper, rave in the wildest, yet most pathetic language on this event.
“Some little time before he expired, he had fashioned one of the young women into his wife; and starting up in bed, cursing the war which had snatched her away from him, he fixed his eyes ghastly upon me, which I readily translated into a remonstrance for being the author of his unhappy malady, fell back into a swoon, from which he never recovered.”