A few pieces of silver might be carried off with much greater facility than a huge clumsy ox.  Notwithstanding all the efforts to preserve this valuable booty from the general wreck, it was absolutely impossible to save the whole of it.  Many horned cattle and horses were left behind, and now innocently sought a scanty repast by the city-walls.  That, amidst all this “confusion worse confounded,” there was no want of shouting and blustering, you may easily imagine, though nobody got forward any faster for all this noise.  On a sudden we saw at a distance the emperor himself, with not a numerous retinue, advancing on horseback into the midst of this chaos.  He got through better than I expected.  I afterwards learned that he took a by-road through a garden to the outer Ranstaedt gate.  Prince Poniatowsky attempted, higher up, to ford the Elster.  The banks on each side are of considerable height, soft and swampy; the current itself narrow, but in this part uncommonly deep and muddy.  How so expert a rider should have lost the management of his horse, I cannot imagine.  According to report, the animal plunged headlong into the water with him, so that he could not possibly recover himself.  He fell a victim to his temerity, and was drowned.  His body was found several days afterwards, and interred with all the military honours due to his rank[5].

As the commander-in-chief had so precipitately quitted the city, we could no longer doubt the proximity of the enemy to our walls.  The fire of the artillery and musketry in the place, which gradually approached nearer, was a much more convincing proof of this than we desired.  The men already began to cut away the traces, in order to save the horses.  The bustle among the soldiers augmented; a weak rearguard had taken post in Reichel’s garden, to keep the allies in check, in case they should penetrate into the high road.  We thought them still at a considerable distance, when a confused cry suddenly proclaimed that the Russians had stormed the outer Peter’s gate, and were coming round from the Rossplatz.  The French were evidently alarmed.  The Russian jaegers came upon them all at once, at full speed, with tremendous huzzas and fixed bayonets, and discharged their pieces singly, without stopping.  I now thought it advisable to quit my dangerous post, and hasten home with all possible expedition.  I was informed by the way that the Prussians had that moment stormed the Grimma gate, and would be in the city in a few minutes.  On all sides was heard the firing of small arms, intermixed at times with the reports of the artillery, already playing upon the waggon-train in the suburbs.  Musket-balls, passing over the city wall, likewise whizzed through the streets; and, when I ventured to put my head out of the window, I observed with horror, not far from my house, two Prussian jaegers pursuing and firing at some Frenchmen who were running away.  Behind them I heard the storm-march, and huzzas and shouts of Long live Frederic William! from thousands of voices.  A company of Baden jaegers was charged with the defence of the inner Peter’s gate.  These troops immediately abandoned their post, and ran as fast as their legs would carry them to the market-place, where they halted, and, like the Saxon grenadier guards, fired not a single shot.