The nearer we came to Soissons[79] the nearer we perceived we were to the field of some terrible contest, and the suburbs, where the thickest of the fight took place, presented a frightful picture of war, not a house entire. It seems they were unroofed for the convenience of the attacking party, or set on fire, an operation which took up a very short space of time, thanks to the energetic labours of about 50 or 60,000 men. Indeed, fire and sword had done their utmost--burnt beams, battered doors, not a vestige of furniture or window frames. I cannot give you a better idea of the quantity of shot, and consequent number of beings who must have perished, than by assuring you that on one front of a house about the extent of our home, and which was not more favoured than its neighbours, I counted between 2 and 300 bullet marks. I was leaning against a bit of broken wall in a garden, which appeared to be the doorway to a sort of cellar, taking a sketch, when the gardener came up and gave me some particulars of the fight. He pointed to this cave or cellar as the place of shelter in which he and 44 others had been concealed, every moment dreading a discovery which, whether by friend or foe, they looked upon as equally fatal. Fortunately the foe were the discoverers. Upon the termination of the battle, which had been favourable to the Allies, in came a parcel of Russians upon the trembling peasants. Conceiving it to be a hiding-place for French soldiers, they rushed upon them, but finding none, satisfied themselves with asking what business they had there, and turning them out to find their way through blood and slaughter to some more secure place of shelter. A small mill pool had been so completely choked with dead that they were obliged to let off the water and clean it out. With Sir Charles Stuart's dispatches cut out of the Macclesfield Paper we ascended the Cathedral, and from thence, as upon a map, traced out the operations of both armies. Soissons is half surrounded by the Aisne, and stands on a fine plain, upon which the Russians displayed. Buonaparte, in one of his Bulletins, abuses a governor who allowed the Allies to take possession of the town when he was in pursuit, thus giving them a passage over the river, adding that had that governor done his duty the Russians might have been cut off. In England this was all voted "leather and prunello" and a mere vapouring opinion of the Emperor's, but as far as I could observe he was perfectly right, and had the governor been acting under my orders I question much whether I should not have hanged him. In looking about we were shewn a sort of town hall, with windows ornamented with the most beautiful painted glass you ever saw--nice little figures, trophies, landscapes, &c.--but a party of Russians had unfortunately been lodged there, and the glass was almost all smashed. I procured a specimen, but alas! portmanteaus are not the best packing-cases for glass, and in my possession it fared