Page:The Siege of London - Posteritas - 1885.djvu/62

 than let their grand historical castle fall into the hands of the hated enemy.

Night closed in upon the awful scene and put a stop to hostilities. The French took possession of the ruins of the Castle. They were famished and weary, having been fighting for many hours without food. It was not until midnight that their cavalry, which had pursued the routed English, returned, and brought with them the commissariat wagons. They also brought 2,000 prisoners. They had been unable to capture more as the many bridges over the Canal had enabled the retreating troops to effect their escape south.

Driven to despair on seeing how the battle had gone against the English, the citizens of Edinburgh resolved that their splendid town should be given to the flames, and very soon the darkness of the night was dispelled by lurid gleams that broke out in a hundred quarters at once, especially in the old town. The French made desperate efforts to extinguish these fires, but efforts were utterly futile, and a strong gale fanning the flames, the whole town soon seemed to be in a blaze, and the invading army beheld the magnificent city, which they had taken at such an immense cost, wrapped in a winding-sheet of fire. Only the pen of a Dante could depict the hellish horrors of that awful night. All through the long hours the work of destruction went on, and the screams of affrighted animals, the agonised cries of dying people, the crash of falling houses, the roar of the flames, and the howling of the fierce wind, made up an appalling spectacle such as the world has rarely witnessed.

When the grey, dull morning broke, more than half the old town was simply a mass of smouldering ruins, beneath which lay the calcined bodies of thousands of its devoted inhabitants. To the French, Edinburgh was a second Moscow, and, as they marched southward, with the blinding snow beating in their faces, and a freezing wind chilling them to the marrow, while their dead and dying marked their wake, they must have sickened at the thought that they were scattering sorrow, suffering, and agony, even as the sower scatters his seed. It is reported of the French Commander-in-Chief that he said, with tears in