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The cellars were filled with sugar, oil, and vitriol: these burning all at once in the subterraneous warehouses, sent forth torrents of flames through thick iron grates, and presented a striking image of the mouth of hell. It was a spectacle both terrible and affecting. Even the most hardened minds were struck with a conviction that so great a calamity would on some future day call forth the vengeance of the Almighty upon the authors of such crimes.
“The hospitals too, which contained 20,000 wounded Russians, now began to burn. This offered a harrowing and dreadful spectacle. Almost all these miserable creatures perished. A few who still lingered, were seen crawling, half burnt, among the smoking ruins ; and others, groaning under heaps of dead bodies, endeavoured in vain to extricate themselves from the horrible destruction which surrounded them.
"In the morning, about the dawn of day, I witnessed the most dreadful and the most affecting scenes which it is possible to conceive namely, the unhappy inhabitants drawing upon some vehicles all that they had been able to save from the conflagration. The soldiers, having robbed them of their horses, the men and women were slowly and painfully dragging along these little carts, some of them contained an in firm mother, others a paralytic old man, and others the miserable wrecks of half-consumed furniture; children, half naked, followed these interesting groups. Affliction, to which their age is commonly a stranger, was impressed even
