No quarter give, but strike the fatal blow,
Dear let your life-blood be;
Ask not for mercy, and to none bestow,
For death makes all men free.
This whole scene is based on facts, for which I am indebted to
personal communications from the Countess Ahlefeldt. Theodore Korner
fell in the first year of the war of liberation, before the decisive
battle of Leipsic, on the 26th of August, 1813, in a skirmish which
the corps of Major von Lutzow had with the French near Gadebusch.
Only an hour prior to his death, while lying in ambush, he wrote his
immortal "Song of the Sword" in his note-book. The statement of Mr.
Alison, the historian, that he was killed in the battle of Dresden,
is erroneous.
Leonora Prohaska fell in an engagement on the Gorde, the 16th of
September, 1813. A bullet pierced her breast. When she felt that she
was dying, she revealed to her comrades that she was a woman, and
that her name was Leonora Prohaska, and not Charles Renz.
Caroline Peters was more fortunate. She participated in the
campaigns of 1813 and 1814, was decorated with the order of the Iron
Cross on account of her bravery, and honorably discharged at the end
of the war. She was then married to the captain of an English vessel
whom she accompanied on his travels, and with whom she visited her
relatives at Stettin in 1844.--L. M.]
CHAPTER XXVIII.
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