On the 28th the Emperor visited the battlefield, which presented a frightful spectacle, and gave orders that everything possible should be done to alleviate the sufferings of the wounded, and also of the inhabitants and peasants who had been ravaged and pillaged, and their fields and houses burned, and then ascended the heights from which he could follow the course of the enemy’s retreat.  Almost all the household followed him in this excursion.  A peasant was brought to him from Nothlitz, a small village where the Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia had their headquarters during the two preceding days.  This peasant, when questioned by the Duke of Vicenza, said he had seen a great personage brought into Nothlitz, who had been wounded the evening before on the staff of the allies.  He was on horseback, and beside the Emperor of Russia, at the moment he was struck.  The Emperor of Russia appeared to take the deepest interest in his fate.  He had been carried to the headquarters of Nothlitz on lances of the Cossacks interlaced, and to cover him they could find only a cloak wet through with the rain.  On his arrival at Nothlitz the Emperor Alexander’s surgeon came to perform the amputation, and had him carried on an extending chair to Dippoldiswalde, escorted by several Austrian, Prussian, and Russian detachments.

On learning these particulars the Emperor was persuaded that the Prince von Schwarzenberg was the person in question.  “He was a brave man,” said he; “and I regret him.”  Then after a silent pause, “It is then he,” resumed his Majesty, “who is the victim of the fatality!  I have always been oppressed by a feeling that the events of the ball were a sinister omen, but it is very evident now that it was he whom the presage indicated.”

While the Emperor gave himself up to these conjectures, and recalled his former presentiments, prisoners who were brought before his Majesty had been questioned; and he learned from their reports that the Prince von Schwarenzberg had not been wounded, but was well, and was directing the retreat of the Austrian grand army.  Who was, then, the important personage struck by a French cannonball?  Conjectures were renewed on this point, when the Prince de Neuchatel received from the King of Saxony a collar unfastened from the neck of a wandering dog which had been found at Nothlitz.  On the collar was written these words, “I belong to General Moreau.”  This furnished, of course, only a supposition; but soon exact information arrived, and confirmed this conjecture.

Thus Moreau met his death the first occasion on which he bore arms against his native country,—­he who had so often confronted with impunity the bullets of the enemy.  History has judged him severely; nevertheless, in spite of the coldness which had so long divided them, I can assert that the Emperor did not learn without emotion the death of Moreau, notwithstanding his indignation that so celebrated a French general could have taken up arms against France, and worn the Russian cockade.  This unexpected death produced an evident effect in both camps, though our soldiers saw in it only a just judgment from Heaven, and an omen favorable to the Emperor.  However that may be, these are the particulars, which I learned a short time after, as they were related by the valet de chambre of General Moreau.