A British officer

“ At ten o’clock a simultaneous assault was to be made on the castle, the San Roque, the breaches, the Pardaleras, San Vincente, and the bridge head, on the other side of the Guadiana.
The enemy were, as yet, all unconscious of the design of our general, and the dark array of the British moved slowly and silently forward. Every heart was full; for, although now unusual quiet reigned, every one knew that it was but the prelude to that hour when death, in its most terrible and ghastly forms, would be dealt on every side. ”

“ No man was safe; none dared assume authority, or even offer advice. Murder, and lust, and rapine, and cruelty, stalked fearlessly through the streets. On the morning of the ninth, far away on the hills to the north-west, appeared a large body of cavalry, like a dark cloud overhanging the troubled city. At noon, the resistless emperor sat down before the gates of Madrid, and summoned the city to surrender. Calmness and quiet reigned in the French camp, but Madrid was struggling like a wild beast in the toils. ”

“ It has seldom happened to any nation to engage in hostilities with a foreign power whose real strength and resources are so imperfectly known. No other empire but that of Russia ever succeeded in keeping so vast a portion of the globe a secret and a mystery from the rest of mankind. We know that she possesses territories wider than the realms of Tamerlane; and that the troops under her banners are as countless as the hosts that followed Napoleon when he was the master of Europe. ”

“ We were not alone in our sad feelings. The fierce contest of the elements, the discomforts of our position, and the deep gloom which covered every object, all served to deepen in every heart those feelings which, I venture to say, even the bravest will experience in the stillness and silence of a night preceding a battle.
With the early dawn of morning all the troops were in motion. Wellington was to commence the action, while Blucher, with all his army, with the exception of a single corps left to contend with Marshal Grouchy, marched to support him. ”

“ Thus does war destroy all the finer feelings of the heart, and cherish those passions which quench even the pure flame of a mother’s love for her helpless and dependent child. To this woman I appealed for help; and, with her assistance, succeeded in reaching the little hill to which I have alluded, and remained there in safety until the fate of the day was fully decided.
Between eight and nine o’clock that night the last of the French troops had withdrawn from the field, which had been fatal to so many thousands of human beings. ”

“ Those courageous women, through an incessant fire of the batteries and the musketry, carried water and wine to the soldiers, and bore back the wounded. Every day produced acts of heroism equally conspicuous, for the attack continued with unabated force. The sharp-shooters of the enemy were stationed thickly in the trenches; and so fatal was their aim, that for any of the garrison to be seen, only for a moment, was certain death. ”

“ Saragossa was taken; but what a capture! As Lannes rode through the streets at the head of his victorious army, he looked only on a heap of ruins, while six thousand unburied corpses lay in his path. Sixteen thousand lay sick, while on the living famine had written more dreadful characters than death had traced on the fallen. Infants lay on the breasts of their dead mothers, striving in vain to draw life from bosoms that would never throb again. Attenuated forms, with haggard faces and sunken eyes and cheeks, wandered around among the dead to search for their friends ”

“ Then loud shouts of victory! victory! resounded through the streets, and found its joyful echo in many hearts.
During this siege, five thousand men and officers had fallen; thirty-five hundred having lost their lives the night of the assault,—twenty-four hundred at the breaches alone. If any one would picture to himself the terrible scenes that occurred at this spot, let him imagine a lot of less than a hundred square yards, which, in the short space of little more than two hours, was deluged by the blood of twenty-four hundred men. ”

“ A few minutes before 12 o’clock, the French, like a swarm of bees, issued forth from their trenches close to the doomed Malakoff, swarmed up its face, and were through its embrasures in the twinkling of an eye. They crossed the ground which separated them from the enemy at a few bounds—they drifted as lightly and quickly as autumn leaves before the wind, battalion after battalion, into the embrasures, and in a minute or two after the head of their column issued from the ditch, the tricolor was floating over the Korniloff bastion. ”

“ No one suspected for a moment that enormous masses of Russians were creeping up the rugged sides of the heights over the valley of Inkerman, on the undefended flank of the Second Division. There all was security and repose. Little did the slumbering troops in camp imagine that a subtle and indefatigable enemy were bringing into position an overwhelming artillery, ready to play upon their tents at the first glimpse of daylight. ”

“ A frightful tumult succeeded to the stillness which had reigned in the city when the troops first entered. The French soldiers, tormented by hunger and thirst, and loosened from all discipline by the horrors which surrounded them, often rushed headlong into the burning edifices to ransack their cellars for wines and spirits, and beneath the ruins great numbers miserably perished, the victims of intemperance and the surrounding fire. Napoleon abandoned the Kremlin on the evening of the 16th. ”

“ The artillery, now so splendid, was then only remarkable for its cumbrous carriages and the obstinate valor of its men. Inured to hardship from infancy, the Russian soldier is better able to bear [9] the fatigues of war than any in Europe; he knows no duty so sacred as obedience to his officers. Submissive to his discipline as to his religion, no privation or fatigue makes him forget his obligations. The whole of the energies of the Empire are turned to the army. Commerce, the law, and civil employment are held in no esteem. ”

“ Disappointed in his hopes of negotiating peace, Napoleon prepared with renewed vigor for war. The campaign was the most important of his life. Its daring and success are almost unparalleled in history.
Crossing the Alps, the highest chain of mountains in Europe, without roads, his artillery had to be dragged over narrow foot-paths, up the rugged sides of frowning mountains, and on the brink of awful precipices covered with snow; while provisions and stores for a whole army had to be carried by sheep-paths on the backs of men. ”

“ The Russians no longer fought for victory, but for existence. Great numbers sought to save themselves by crossing with their artillery and cavalry a frozen lake adjoining their line of march. The ice was already beginning to yield under the enormous weight, when the shells from the French batteries bursting below the surface, caused it to crack with a loud explosion. A frightful yell arose from the perishing multitude, and above two thousand brave men were swallowed up in the waves. At noon the allies gave way, and commenced their retreat in the direction of Austerlitz. ”

“ I know of no sadder scene than a field of battle presents soon after the conflict, even though the glorious result may have filled our hearts with joy. When the roll is called, and name after name uttered without response, it cannot but awaken the deepest sensibility in the heart of the survivors. And then the hasty burial of the dead, and the hurried sending off the wounded, the surgeon’s necessary operations, and the groans of the sufferers, all make us feel that these are the horrors of war. ”

“ As the lancers and light cavalry of the Russians advanced, they gathered up their skirmishers with great speed, and in excellent order; the shifting trails of men, which played all over the valley, like moonlight on the water, contracted, gathered up, and the little pelotons in a few moments became a solid column. Then up came their guns, in rushed their gunners to the abandoned redoubts, and the guns of the second redoubt soon played with deadly effect upon the dispirited defenders of the third. ”

“ There is nothing so awful as the spectacle of the bodies of those who have been struck down by round shot or shell. Some had their heads taken off by the neck, as with an axe; others, their legs gone from their hips; others their arms; and others again, who were hit in the chest or stomach, were literally as mashed as if they had been crushed in a machine. Passing up to Sebastopol, over heaps of Russian dead, I came to the spot where the Guards had been compelled to retire from the defence of the wall above Inkerman valley. Here the dead of the Allies were nearly as numerous as the enemy’s. ”

“ For a long time, those squares, under the unflinching Ney, stood, and let the artillery plough through them. But the fate of Napoleon was writ, and though Ney doubtless did [222] what no other man in the army could have done, the decree could not be reversed. The star that blazed so brightly over the world went down with honor and in blood, and the ‘bravest of the brave’ had fought his last battle. It was worthy of his great name; and the charge of the Old Guard at Waterloo, with him at their head, will be pointed to by remotest generations with a shudder. ”

“ All the inhabited and cultivated lands of the village are held in common as undivided property. No portion is ceded as private property. The starost divides the fruits or profits of the whole amongst them. So, again, all these villages or townships form the nation; a nation of men equal among themselves, and equally subject to the chief of the empire and the race—the Czar. The authority of the Czar is absolute, like the obedience of his subjects. Any restriction on the authority of the Czar appears to a true Russian as a monstrous contradiction. ”

“ It is a difficult task, in a few lines of prose, to render justice to a bravery which excels that sung by the blind and immortal bard of Greece. We might devote page after page to individual feats of heroic daring in this fearful struggle, when 8,000 British troops and 6,000 Frenchmen defeated an army of 60,000 Russians, who left more killed and wounded upon the battle-field than the whole force the Allies brought against them. ”

“ I refer to the scenes which followed the victory, when Badajos lay at the mercy of its conquering foe. If there is one feature of war more repulsive than another, one from which every good feeling of the heart shrinks back appalled, it is from the scene which invariably follows, when permission is given to sack and plunder a conquered city. All restraint is laid aside. Men’s passions, wound up almost to frenzy by the exciting and maddening scenes through which they have passed, will have a vent; and no sorrow is too holy, no place too sacred, to shield its occupant from the storm. ”

“ Every house was a fortress, and around its walls were separate battle-fields, where deeds of frantic valor were done. Day after day did these single-handed fights continue, while famine and pestilence walked the city at noonday, and slew faster than the swords of the enemy. ”

“ But such was the impetuosity of the French onset, that the light troops, drawn up in front of these squares, were driven in, and the cavalry, which should have supported them, fled on every side. The Brunswick infantry now opened their fire upon the French cavalry, with a coolness and intrepidity that made dreadful gaps in their squadrons, and strewed the ground with men and horses that were advancing to the charge. But the courage of the French did not desert them. Their artillery played, at the distance of one hundred and fifty yards, on the British squares, with dreadful execution. ”

“ He would not rest here, and the events of the hundred days had roused again the world to arms. The prestige of his name had won [201] back the allegiance of the French, and thousands had, as in days of yore, collected around his standard. The battle which should decide the fate of Europe drew on. France stood alone, on the one side, with her veteran troops, and her memories of glorious victories, and, more than all, her emperor; and on the other were the united forces of England and the continent. Napoleon was confident of victory. ”

“ The fifteen hundred slain in Akhulgo were the seeds of so many blood-feuds between the Russians and every tribe in the Caucasus—the pledges of an unquenchable personal hatred on the part of the mountaineers to the Muscovites, for ever. The wanton brutality of the soldiers to the inhabitants, in their line of march, disgusted even those tribes who would have been willing to remain friendly ”