If the enemy's General cannot be satisfied with gifts, or if the town is to be punished, the inhabitants of most consideration are collected, forcibly detained, threatened, and, perhaps at last, carried off as hostages. If a larger corps is encamped round the city, one battalion bivouacs in the market-place. The French are rapidly accommodated. They have fetched straw from the suburbs, they have robbed provisions on the road, and cut up the doors and furniture for fire-wood. Disagreeably sounds the crash of the axe on the beams and woodwork of the houses. Brightly blaze up the camp fires, and loud laughter, with French songs, sound about the flames.
When the enemy withdraws in the morning, after having remained one night through which the citizens have held anxious watch, they gaze with astonishment on the rapid devastation of their city, and on the sudden change in the country outside the gates. The boundless ocean of corn, which yesterday waved round their city walls, is vanished, rooted up, crushed and trampled by man and horse. The wooden fences of the gardens are broken, summer arbours and houses are torn away, and fruit-trees cut down. The fire-wood lies in heaps round the smouldering watch-fires, and the citizen may find there the planks of his waggon and the doors of his barn. He can scarcely recognise the place where his own garden was, for the site of it is covered with camp straw, confused rubbish, and the blood and entrails of slaughtered beasts. In the distance, where the houses of the nearest village project above the foliage of the trees, he perceives no longer the outline of the roofs, only the walls are standing, like a heap of ruins.
It was bitter to pass through such an hour, and many lost all heart. Even for people of property it was now difficult to support their families. All the provisions of the city and neighbourhood were consumed or destroyed, and no countryman brought even the necessaries of life to the market, it was needful therefore to send far into the country for the means to appease hunger. But from a rapid succession of great events men had become colder, more sturdy and hardier in themselves. The strong participation which every individual had taken in the fate of the State made them indifferent to their own hardships. After every danger, it was felt to be a comfort that the last thing, life, was saved. And there was hope.