compel them to drink brandy until they fell in a complete state of
intoxication. Many women and young girls had courage and strength to
defend themselves against these brigands; but they united three or four
against one, and often to avenge themselves for the resistance of these
poor creatures mutilated and slew them, after having first violated them,
or threw them into the midst of the bivouac fires. Farms were burned up,
and families recently opulent or in comfortable circumstances were
reduced in an instant to despair and poverty. Husbands and old men were
slain with the sword while attempting to defend the honor of their wives
and daughters; and when poor mothers attempted to approach the fires to
warm the children at their breasts, they were burned or killed by the
explosion of packages of cartridges, which the Cossacks threw
intentionally into the fire; and the cries of pain and agony were stifled
by the bursts of laughter from these monsters.

I should never end if I attempted to relate all the atrocities committed
by these foreign hordes. It was the custom at the time of the
Restoration to say that the complaints and narrations of those who were
exposed to these excesses were exaggerated by fear or hatred. I have
even heard very dignified persons jest pleasantly over the pretty ways of
the Cossacks. But these wits always kept themselves at a distance from
the theater of war, and had the good fortune to inhabit departments which
suffered neither from the first nor second invasion. I would not advise
them to address their pleasantries to the unfortunate inhabitants of
Champagne, or of the departments of the east in general. It has been
maintained also that the allied sovereigns and the general officers of
the Russian and Prussian army severely forbade all violence in their
regular troops, and that the atrocities were committed by undisciplined
and ungovernable bands of Cossacks. I have been in a position to learn,
on many occasions, especially at Troves, proofs to the contrary. This