The barns are all burned down, and in the court-yard it is said
they have been obliged to burn upwards of a thousand carcases, an awful
holocaust to the War-Demon.
As nothing is more distressing than the sight of human misery when we are
unable to silence it, I returned as speedily as possible to Bruxelles with
Cowper's lines in my head:
War is a game, which, were their subjects wise,
Kings should not play at.
I hope this battle will, at any rate, lead to a speedy peace.
June 28.
We have no other news from the Allied Army, except that they are moving
forward with all possible celerity in the direction of Paris. You may form
a guess of the slaughter and of the misery that the wounded must have
suffered, and the many that must have perished from hunger and thirst, when
I tell you that all the carriages in Bruxelles, even elegant private
equipages, landaulets, barouches and berlines, have been put in requisition
to remove the wounded men from the field of battle to the hospitals, and
that they are yet far from being all brought in. The medical practitioners
of the city have been put in requisition, and are ordered to make
domiciliary visits at every house (for each habitation has three or four
soldiers in it) in order to dress the wounds of the patients.
