Since our departure from Bremen no bed but the open field or the barest floor has rested my limbs until this evening, when, for the first time in a week, I enjoyed the luxury of a change of clothes. How sweet it is to rest after a hard day's work! This town, surrounded by an old-style ditch and wall, was even this forenoon in possession of the enemy. About eighty Cossacks, eight hundred German recruits and the whole male population, armed with muskets, spears and pitch-forks, defended the place for two hours. But as we had sixteen field-guns, and they none fit for use, we defeated them with inconsiderable loss. The greater part of the civilians, fearing severe punishment, fled with the Cossacks. Our gunners poured in the shot and grape until there is scarcely a whole window in the western half of the town. Two of our companies headed the Saxons in the assault over the wall, while the rest pressed in through the battered-down gates. Louis was in the lead, and landed inside without a scratch. Having lost his knapsack in a skirmish on the road, he had no surplus weight to carry. Frank was close behind me in the rush through the Bardowicker gate. Though this day may never be honored with a line in the annals of the great Napoleonic wars, it was quite as hot for a while as any other of greater fame for those immediately concerned. The street-scenes were ghastly, and forcibly reminded me of certain others of saddest memory, when, a boy of only nine years of age, I followed you, my dear parents, over the dead and mangled bodies of citizens and soldiers out of the town of Saverne, disgraced and blood-stained by a revolutionary mob. With this difference, however, that here the dead and wounded were our inveterate foes, while there they wore the features of our most cherished friends and neighbors. [Illustration: DON COSSACKS AND BASHKIRS.] IN A VILLAGE NEAR BOITZENBURG, 4th April. How quickly the leaf has turned! At the date of my last we were victors: to-day we are not only vanquished, but prisoners.