TUESDAY, 15th AUGUST, 1758. At two in the morning, several thousand Russians, grenadiers, under Quartermaster General Stoffeln, whom the readers of Mannstein know from old Oczakow times, are astir; pushing along from Gross Kamin, through the scraggy firwoods, and flat peat countries; intending a stroke on Custrin, if perhaps they can get it: [Tempelhof, ii. 217; but Tielcke, ii. 69 et seq., the real source.]--not the slightest chance to get Custrin; Prussian soldiership and Turkish being two quite different things! The pickeering and manoeuvring of Stoffeln shall not detain us. Stoffeln came along by the Landsberg road (course of the now Konigsberg-Custrin Railway); and drove in the Prussian out-parties, who at first took him for Cossacks. Stoffeln set himself down on the north side of the place; planted cannon in certain clay-pits thereabouts, and about nine o'clock began firing shells and incendiary grenadoes at a great rate. Tielcke saw everything,--and had the honor to take luncheon, that evening, with certain chief Officers, sitting on the ground, after all was over, and only a few shots from the Garrison still dropping. [Tielcke, ii. 75 n.] At the third grenade, which, it seems, fell into a straw magazine, Custrin took fire; could not be quenched again, so much dry wood in it, so much disorder too, the very soldiers some of them disorderly (a bad deserter set); so that it soon flamed aloft,--from side to side one sea of flame: and man, woman and child, every soul (except the Garrison, which sat enclosed in strong stone), had to fly across the River, under penalty of death by fire. Of Custrin, by five in the evening, there was nothing left but the black ashes; the Garrison standing unharmed, and the Church, School-house and some stone edifices in a charred skeleton condition. "No life was lost, except that of one child in arms." All Neumark had lodged its valuables in this place of strength; all are fled now in horror and terror across the Oder, by the Bridge, before it also unquenchably takes fire, at the western or non-Russian end of the place. Such a day as was seldom seen in human experience;--Fermor responsible for it, happily not we.