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left nothing for the rear to live on, and a great famine ensued; for though nothing opposed them in front, they could not escape from famine which followed them in the rear. "Napoleon was obliged to shut his eyes to a system of plunder, which he vainly prohibited; too well aware also of the attraction that mode of subsistence has for the soldier: that it caused him to love a state of things that enriched him." Generous protection, to his friends, the Poles! "The officers themselves had no other means of subsistence than from the share which the soldiers gave them. They arrived famished at habitations. *** As they became more and more exasperated with hunger, they became furious; and after rifling both cottage and palace, without finding the subsistence they sought for, they, in the violence of despair, accused the inhabitants of being their enemies, and took their revenge of the proprietors, by destroying their property." It must be remembered that this was in Lithuania, a part of Russian Poland, which they said they had come to deliver from oppression, and that this was a victorious army.

"Al

ready enfeebled by famine, it was necessary to make forced marches in order to fly from it, and reach the enemy. At night when they halted, the soldiers thronged into the houses, where, worn out with fatigue and want, they threw themselves on the first dirty straw they met with❞—a luxury which gold could not buy on their retreat.-Here many soldiers perished with hunger and fatigue and from being unable to escape from the houses and villages, to which their comrades had set fire.

These were but the beginning of sorrows. As the victorious army advanced, its distresses increased. "It only subsisted by its exertions; and from day to day it had not provisions for four and twenty hours." *** "The army had advanced but a hundred leagues from the Wiemen: and already it was completely altered. The officers who travelled post, from the interior of France, to join it, arrived dismayed. They could not conceive how it happened, that a victorious army without fighting should leave behind it more wrecks than a defeated one."

"From these sufferings, physical and mor

al: from these privations, from these continual bivouacs, as dangerous near the pole as under the equator, and from the infection of the air, by putrefied carcases of men and horses, that strewed the roads, sprang two dreadful epidemics-the dysentery and the typhus fever. *** Out of 22,000 Bavaria

ans, who had crossed the Oder, 11,000 only, reached the Duna, and yet they had never been in action. This military march cost the French one fourth, and the allies one half of their armies."

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Every morning, the regiments started in order from their bivouacs; but scarcely had they proceeded a few steps before their widening ranks became lengthened out into small and broken files; the weakest, being unable to follow, dropped behind. These unfortunate wretches beheld their comrades and their eagles getting farther and farther from them they still strove to overtake, but, at length, lost sight of them, and sunk disheartened. *** Great numbers perished."

"At Wilna, it was not possible to establish hospitals for more than 6000 sick; convents, churches, synagogues, and barns, ser

ved to receive this suffering multitude. In these dismal places, sometimes unhealthy, but still too few and too crowded, the sick were frequently without food, without beds, without covering, and even without medicines."

But I forbear: pages might be filled with the sufferings of the victorious grand army in its pursuit of the enemy, and some worse than the above; and yet these were but roseleaves to what they suffered when they in turn had to fly, and all the horrors of a northern winter and continued defeat and flight were added to the usual horrors of war, pestilence and famine-then they felt the thorn. Nor are these miseries unusual accompaniments to "the pomp and circumstance of glorious war."-In the late atrocious invasion of the Burman empire, the British army lost half its number by sickness, and almost without a battle-so true is Dr. Johnson's remark, that, "War has means of destruction more formidable than the cannon and the sword."

NO. 20.

OPINIONS OF THE LATE PRESIDENT JEFFERSON ON PEACE AND WAR.

It has been frequently observed, that the enrolment of Mr. Jefferson's name in the list of the members of the Massachusetts Peace Society, was without his consent. In order to correct this error, and to shew the opinions of this able statesman and philosopher, on this important subject, I send you the whole of Mr. Jefferson's letter to the Secretary of the above named society, dated

NOV. 26, 1817.

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SIR-You have not been mistaken, in supposing my views and feelings to be in favour of the abolition of war. Of my disposition to maintain peace, until its condition shall be made less tolerable than that of war itself, the world has had proofs, and more perhaps than it has approved. I hope it is practicable by improving the minds and morals of society, to lessen the disposition to war; but of its abolition I despair. Still, on the axiom that a less degree of evil is preferable to a greater, no means should be neglected, which

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