his demand, the magistrates
represented that the city having been exhausted by the enormous
contributions already raised, was absolutely incapable of furnishing
further supplies; that the trade was stagnated and ruined, and the
inhabitants so impoverished, that they could no longer pay the ordinary
taxes. This remonstrance made no impression. At five in the morning
the Prussian soldiers assembled, and were posted in all the streets,
squares, market-places, cemeteries, towers, and steeples; then the gates
being shut, in order to exclude the populace of the suburbs from the
city, the senators were brought into the town-hall, and accosted by
general Hauss, who told them, the king his master would have money; and,
if they refused to part with it, the city should be plundered. To
this peremptory address they replied to this effect:--"We have no more
money,--we have nothing left but life; and we recommend ourselves to
the king's mercy." In consequence of this declaration, dispositions were
made for giving up the city to be plundered. Cannon were planted in all
the streets, the inhabitants were ordered to remain within doors, and
every house resounded with dismal cries and lamentations. The dreaded
pillage, however, was converted into a regular exaction. A party of
soldiers, commanded by a subaltern, went from house to house, signifying
to every burgher, that he should produce all his specie, on pain of
immediate pillage and massacre; and every inhabitant delivered up his
all without further hesitation. About six in the evening, the soldiers
returned to their quarters; but the magistrates were detained in
confinement, and all the citizens were overwhelmed with grief and
consternation. Happy Britain, who knowest such grievances only by
report! When the king of Prussia first entered Saxony, at the beginning
of the war, he declared he had no design to make a conquest of that
electorate, but only to keep it as a depositum for the security of
his own dominions, until he could oblige his enemies to acquiesce in
reasonable terms of peace; but upon his last arrival at Dresden he
adopted a new resolution. In the beginning of December, the Prussian
directory of war issued a decree to the deputies of the states of the
electorate, demanding a certain quantity of flour and forage, according
to the convention formerly settled; at the same time signifying, that
though the king of Prussia had hitherto treated the electorate as a
country taken