Far different is the lot of other nations and of other countries. There is scarcely a region of Continental Europe but has in its turn drunk deep within these few years of the cup of horrors. Germany, the theatre of unnumbered contests--the mountains of Switzerland, which for ages had reverberated only the notes of rustic harmony--the fertile vales of the Peninsula--the fields of Austria--the sands of Prussia--the vast forests of Poland, and the boundless plains of the Russian empire--have successively rung with the din of battle, and been drenched with native blood. To the inhabitants of several of these countries, impoverished by the events of war, the boon of British benevolence has been nobly extended; but the facts related in the following sheets will bear me out in the assertion, that none of these cases appealed so forcibly to the attention of the humane as that of Leipzig, and its immediate vicinity. Their innocent inhabitants have in one short year been reduced, by the infatuation of their sovereign, and by that greatest of all curses, the friendship of France, from a state of comfort to absolute beggary; and thousands of them, stripped of their all, are at this moment houseless and unprotected wanderers, exposed to the horrors of famine, cold, and disease. That Leipzig, undoubtedly the first commercial city of Germany, and the great Exchange of the Continent, must, in common with every other town which derives its support from trade and commerce, have severely felt the effects of what Napoleon chose to nickname _the Continental System_, is too evident to need demonstration. The sentiments of its inhabitants towards the author of that system could not of course be very favourable; neither were they backward in shewing the spirit by which they were animated, as the following facts will serve to evince:--When the French, on their return from their disastrous Russian expedition, had occupied Leipzig, and were beginning, as usual, to levy requisitions of every kind, an express was sent to the Russian colonel Orloff, who had pushed forward with his Cossacks to the distance of about 20 miles, entreating him to release the place from its troublesome guests. He complied with the invitation; and every Frenchman who had not been able to escape, and fancied himself secure in the houses, was driven from his hiding-place, and delivered up to the Cossacks, who were received with unbounded demonstrations of joy.