is all this that has long engaged my attention, and presses itself
upon me at the moment I am writing. In events like these, every
individual, however distant, must take some kind of interest,
either as a merchant or a man of letters, a soldier or an artist;
or, if none of these, at least as a man. How strongly the late
events must interest every benevolent and humane mind I have no
need to tell you, who must more feelingly sympathize in them from
the circumstance that it is your native country, where the
important question, whether the Continent of Europe should
continue to wear an ignominious yoke, and whether it deserved the
fetters of slavery, because it was not capable of bursting them,
has been decisively answered by the greatest and the most
sanguinary contest that has occurred for many ages. That same
Saxony, which three centuries ago released part of the world from
the no less galling yoke of religious bondage; which, according to
history, has been the theatre of fifteen great battles; that same
Saxony is now become the cradle of the political liberty of the
Continent. But a power so firmly rooted could not be overthrown
without the most energetic exertions; and, while millions are now
raising the shouts of triumph, there are, in Saxony alone, a
million of souls who are reduced to misery too severe to be
capable of taking any part in the general joy, and who are now
shedding the bitterest tears of abject wretchedness and want That
such is the fact is confirmed to me by the situation of my
acquaintance and neighbours, by that of my suffering tenants, and
finally by my own. The ever-memorable and eventful battles of the
16th to the 19th of October began exactly upon and between my two
estates of Störmthal and Liebertwolkwitz. All that the oppressive
imposts, contributions, and quarterings, as well as the rapacity
of the yet unvanquished French, had spared, became on these