Von Lossberg says that Christian people of Wilna have also taken part in
the massacre, and only the Poles did not participate.
The Cossacks began their bloody work early in the morning.
Awful cries of the tortured were heard in the Wuerttembergian hospital,
telling the sick who were lying there what they themselves had to expect
from the entering enemies.
Those who had remained in Smolensk and Moscow after the armed soldiers had
departed were at once massacred. In Wilna likewise many were murdered, but
the greater number--many thousands--(other circumstances did not permit to
do away with all these prisoners in the same way) perished after days or
weeks of sickness and privations of all kind.
Wilna's convents could tell of it if their walls could speak.
Dr. Geissler narrates that the prisoners in the Basilius monastery into
which soldiers of all nationalities had been driven, during 13 days
received only a little hardtack, but neither wood nor a drop of water; they
had to quench their thirst with the snow which covered the corpses in the
yard.
The Englishman Wilson, of whom I have spoken already, who had come to Wilna
with Kutusow's army, says: "The Basilius monastery, transformed into
a prison, offered a terrible sight--7,500 corpses were piled up in the
corridors, and corpses were also in other parts of the building, the broken
windows and the holes in the walls were plugged with feet, legs, hands,
heads, trunks, just as they would fit in the openings to keep out the cold
air.
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