saw them marched, with their general at their head, between a double collonnade formed by the allied troops, my mind recurred with great satisfaction to the furcæ Caudinæ and the sub iugum mitti of Roman war fare.
During these memorable days the dearth of provisions that prevailed in Leipsic was quite dreadful. On one occasion I saw a respectable citizen carrying home a loaf under his cloak. Unluckily some soldiers on the promenade got wind of it; they were down upon him in a trice, and the bread was torn from his grasp. He entreated them, with tears, that they would at least leave him half of it; that it had cost him five dollars; and that his wife and children were at home starving. But the soldiers were starving too, so that the unfortunate man was obliged to return home with empty hands, and a heart filled with despair. Willingly would I have given him a share of my own commons; but at the very same time I myself was under the necessity of borrowing from a neighbour a little salt, and half a ration of bread, which he, again, had purchased from a soldier at an enormous percentage. On another occasion, soon after the battle, when the general Kleist von Nollendorf and some other officers called upon us, we had nothing in the house to offer them but a cup of muddy coffee and a morsel of stale biscuit. At length a friend of mine had the good fortune to purchase a cow from a fugitive Frenchman. When the animal was slaughtered, he presented me with half of it, and thus, after being almost starved to death, we again had fresh meat in the house. If a man would form any notion of the straits to which we were reduced, just let him go without his dinner for a fortnight.
Though Germany might now be said to be effectually delivered from the thraldom of the French, a call was yet made upon all patriotic Saxons to rise in arms for the liberation of their king; and as the term of my rectorate had by this time expired, I had no hesitation in obeying the summons. After some drilling, I accordingly took the field as lieutenant of a body of volunteer cavalry. But our campaigns were all bloodless; and at length, after a good deal of marching and counter-marching, during which time I and my comrades were quartered on many an honest countryman—much, I fear, to the inconvenience of themselves and their wives—I again returned to my peaceful avocations in the university of Leipsic, within whose venerated walls I hope to terminate a life which, I trust, has been not altogether unprofitably spent.
