City of Destruction

“ It is now in the middle stage of destruction: almost every building is shattered or injured, but enough is standing to make the empty city seem still sensitive, in its very stones, under the enemy’s random shellfire. ”

“ The description of the assault with which the city is threatened, and of the seven leaders who, like heaven-storming giants, have sworn its destruction, and who, in the emblems borne on their shields, display their arrogance, is an epic subject clothed in the pomp of tragedy. ”

“ If such just reasons for resentment have no force with us, do not the following considerations, I pray you, possess any weight? The city is hemmed in by immense siege-works which confine the enemy within his walls. ”

“ The shots grew in volume and presently we heard the dull boom of a siege gun, then another and another.
“It’s a battle! They’re bombarding the city. Look!” He pointed towards Capitol Square. “They’ve struck the tower of the city hall. And over there! The gas works!” He swept his arm towards an angry red glow that showed where another shell had found its target.
I shall not attempt to describe the burning of Richmond (for the third time in its history) on this fateful day, January 20th, 1922, nor to detail the horrors that attended the destruction of the enemy’s force of occupation. ”

“ The city was empty save for a few soldiers who passed rapidly along the streets, as one marches in a heavy snowstorm.
Yet Verdun was not wholly dead. Shell fire is the most inexplicable of all things that carry destruction. As you passed down [50] one street the mark of destruction varied with each house. ”

“ The governor replied: “The garrison and myself will sooner bury ourselves beneath the ruins than surrender the city.” The bombardment instantly commenced. When the Tournay side was in ashes, the allies transported their bombs to the south-west, and then the conflagration became general; there seemed to be no wish entertained to preserve either the walls or fortifications. An opinion was general in the city, that destruction rather than conquest was the object of the allies, and despair became more tenacious than courage. During the conflagration, the fire caught the arsenal, which blew up. ”

“ It is also important, as a lesson for the future, and naturally brings up the question, what are the best measures, and what is the best policy for the city of New York to adopt, in order to protect itself from that which to-day constitutes its greatest danger—mob violence? If it ever falls in ruins, the work of destruction will commence and end within its own limits. ”

“ Now that they saw nothing surviving amidst the ashes and ruin of the captured City except an armed foe whom all these disasters had failed to appal, and who would entertain no thought of surrender unless force were employed, they determined as a last resort to make an assault on the Citadel. ”

“ Shut up in the cellars with the dead, pinched with famine, while the pestilence rioted without mercy and without resistance, they heard around them the incessant bursting of bombs, and thunder of artillery, and explosions of mines, and crash of falling houses, till the city shook, night and day, as within the grasp of an earthquake. Thousands fell daily, and the town was a mass of ruins. Yet, unconquered and apparently unconquerable, the inhabitants struggled on. ”

“ One after another, new fires blazed up in every quarter of the town, as though it were the intention of the insurgents to wrap the city in a circle of flames, which, contracting by degrees, should burn the whole to ashes; the crowd swarmed and roared in every street; and none but rioters and soldiers being out of doors, it seemed to the latter as if all London were arrayed against them, and they stood alone against the town. ”

“ There I see my lovers clasped in each other’s arms. How pure the flame that bursts from their glowing hearts! And yonder the features of a villain writhing in the fire that shall torment him to eternity. My holy men, my pious and angelic women, stand like martyrs amid the flames, their mild eyes lifted heavenward. Ring out the bells! A city is on fire. See!—destruction roars through my dark forests, while the lakes boil up in steaming billows, and the mountains are volcanoes, and the sky kindles with a lurid brightness! All elements are but one pervading flame! Ha! The fiend! ”

“ I announced that the insurgents had set fire to several of the public buildings of Paris, the Royal and historical Tuileries included. Flames and bombshells are fast reducing the magnificent city to a huge and shapeless ruin. Its architectural glories are rapidly passing away in smoke and flame, such as have never been witnessed since the burning of Moscow, and amid a roar of cannon, a screaming of mitrailleuses, a bursting of projectiles, and a horrid rattle of musketry from different quarters which are appalling. ”

“ The chances are that, like most of the Belgian army, he is no longer treading the gray streets of those demolished cities, but whatever golden streets there may be in the City Celestial. War is race suicide. It kills the best and leaves behind the undermuscled and the under-brained to propagate the species.
Striking farther into the heart of the ruins, we beheld in a section all burned and shattered to the ground a building which stood straight up like a cliff intact and undamaged amidst the general wreckage. ”

“ “I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out. ”

“ The Hôtel de Ville, the Palais de Justice, the Tuileries, the Ministry of Finance, the palace of the Legion of Honour, that of the Council of State, part of the Rue de Rivoli, &c., were ravaged by the flames; barrels of gunpowder were placed in Notre Dame and the Panthéon, ready to blow up the buildings; and the whole city would have been involved in ruin if the national troops had not gained a last and crowning victory in the neighbourhood of La Roquette and Père-la-Chaise on the 28th of May. ”

“ The reverberating boom and the tremor of earth were varied from time to time by the splintering crash of houses crushing and the increase of uproar, as scores of luckless inhabitants went down under the falling rock. Giant cranes with huge, ludicrous awkward arms, heaved up pots of burning pitch and oil and flung them ponderously into the city to do whatever horror of fire and torture had not been done by the engines. Hourly the rattle of small stones increased, merely to attract the attention of the citizens to an activity to which they were so accustomed that it was almost unnoticed. ”

“ Blackened walls, gaping holes, roofless skeletons of houses; and within, a chaos of plaster and falling floors, one house after another, some almost razed to the ground, others with only their tops shot off, but all desolation and ruin. It was not the destruction that made me stop in the square and stare about me, for I had become sated with shelled houses, all the way from Charleville to Lille; it was amazement at the artillery fire that could lay low an entire block and not even drop a shell. ”

“ As one passed house after house, one with a gaping hole in its side, another with the chimneys overthrown, another with a whole wall stove in, none with windows completely glazed, all bearing some mark of assault—as this panorama of destruction unfolded itself one marvelled that anyone should have lived throughout the siege. ”

“ Before night fell it was no longer one vast crowd collected in a single section, but great numbers of gatherings, scattered over the whole length and breadth of the city,—some of them engaged in actual work of demolition and ruin; others with clubs and weapons in their hands, prowling round apparently with no definite atrocity to perpetrate, but ready for any iniquity that might offer,—and, by way of pastime, chasing every stray police officer, or solitary soldier, or inoffensive negro, who crossed the line of their vision ”

“ It was a desperate attempt to force their way through a great city, where every man was an enemy, and they were fired at from almost every house. "Our advance was through streets of flat-roofed and loop-holed houses, each forming a separate fortress." ”

“ The defenders of the city made desperate efforts to strengthen it, tearing down houses that stood too close to the walls, leveling suburbs that might protect the enemy, and erecting earthen defences and new walls where necessary. ”

“ She even escaped nearly unharmed the fearful peril of the great explosion at City Point, when, as it is now supposed, by rebel treachery, the ammunition barge was fired, and hundreds of human beings without an instant's warning, were hurried into eternity. ”

“ Men and women were frantically rushing at each other like starving wild beasts; the armed butchers of the law shooting down all who failed to assist them; truncheons of police breaking every available skull; troopers' horses trampling down anyone, and lances and swords spilling blood like a bursted reservoir; buildings were flaming and consuming their inmates; while in all directions explosives were flying, hurling master and slave together to destruction. ”

“ They threw not only balls of stone and iron, but great carcasses of fire, which burst like meteors on the houses, wrapping them instantly in a blaze. The walls were shattered and the towers toppled down by tremendous discharges from the lombards. Through the openings thus made they could behold the interior of the city—houses tumbling or in flames, men, women, and children flying in terror through the streets, and slaughtered by the shower of missiles sent through the openings from smaller artillery and from crossbows and arquebuses. ”

“ Rioting mobs drowned out the chant of religious fanatics who hailed Judgment Day. Great fires turned the air murky and flame-shot. Machine guns spat regularly in city streets; looting, murder, and fear-crazed crimes were universal. Civilization had completely vanished overnight. ”

“ What could be more revolting to contemplate than the sack of a city,—fire and sword in every street, public buildings razed to the ground, honoured monuments defaced, homes ravaged, children torn from the arms of their parents, young girls dragged away to a horrible fate, lust, robbery, slaughter rampant without shame or restraint, the wild beast in the conquerors let loose, and a whole army, suddenly freed from all rules of discipline, behaving like a swarm of [72] demons just escaped from hell. ”

“ One spark, lighting on a grain of gunpowder, scattered on the floor, might communicate with the rest, make it all explode, and spread destruction everywhere. Think in what fearful peril these reckless men had placed, not only themselves, but the whole town, and the army. ”

“ During the next day the scout wandered about the beleaguered city, viewing the animated and in many respects terrible scene of warfare which it presented,—the fierce bombardment from the Federal works, extending in a long curve from the river above to the river below the city; the hot return fire of the defendants; the equally fierce exchange of fire between the gunboats and mortars and the intrenchments on the bluffs; the bursting of shells in the city streets; the ruined habitations, and the cave-like refuges in which the citizens sought safety from the death-dealing missiles. ”

“ Cities and hamlets, market-towns and villages, blazed up in the fire of vengeance and destruction. The beautiful land, the treasury of spring and abode of joy, was trodden down by the horsemen and filled with smoke. Houses and palaces were left in ashes. The victorious army dragged away captive the inhabitants, great and small, high and low, men and women, strong and weak. ”

“ When one passes through the masses of falling debris and looks upon the remains of cities and villages which have stood for ages and in whose monuments and public buildings a more than human strength and beauty seemed enclosed, it appears that the Angel of Destruction has extended his deadly sceptre over the works of man and congealed those streams of life which once flowed through the streets now deserted and homes 110made desolate by the unheard-of ferocity of civilized man. ”

“ On the first approach of the enemy, all the buildings in the suburbs of a town are demolished, and all the trees in gardens and public walks are cut down, lest they should afford shelter to the besiegers. As the siege goes on, bombs, hot balls, and cannon-shot, are continually flying about ”

“ The Commune had left devastation behind it. On every side were smoldering ruins, including the great municipal buildings, the law courts, and other public edifices, two theatres, eight whole streets, and innumerable private houses, while the dead bodies of its victims lay where they had been shot down. The soldiers, infuriated by the ruin which they beheld on all sides, were savage in their revenge. Every man seized whose hands were black with powder was instantly shot, many innocent persons perishing, since numbers had been forced to the barricades. ”

“ Like a flood that slowly undermines a bank, and which the proprietor regards not when he sees so tiny a current dribbling and oozing through, and scarcely bowing the grass between which it trickles, so came the Destroyer—slowly and almost imperceptibly undermining the current of life, and eating out the foundations, until there needed but one mighty rush, and all was over beyond recovery, and the work of destruction was completed. ”