Note 189 — Chapter LXI
Reading edition
"Barrels of powder had been placed in all the halls of the palace of the Czars, and 183,000 pounds under the vaults which supported them. While Mortier was rapidly retiring, some Cossacks and squalid Muscovites approached: they listened, and emboldened by the apparent quiet which pervaded the fortress, they ventured to penetrate into it; they ascended, and their hands eager after plunder, were already stretched forth, when in a moment they were all destroyed, crushed, hurled into the air, with the buildings which they had come to pillage, and 30,000 stand of arms that had been left behind there; and then their mangled limbs, mixed with fragments of walls and shattered weapons, blown to a great distance, descended in a horrible shower."—Ségur, tom. ii., p. 129.