Demorest

“ Desolate villages and the ruins of human dwellings testified to the fierceness with which the revolution raged, endangering the defenses of the country, wasting its towns, decimating its population, turning its overburdened soil into dust, harassing its people and turning them from decent husbandmen into a mob of beggars and thieves. ”

“ So when vigilance committees were hanging their comrades who had been with them by the camp fires in the deep forests, and in many a bloody foray; and when armed men, fours and sixes, hunted for them; when repose was banished from their home, and the phantom shadow of death peered out at them from every forest thicket, and from the sombre shades of the silent night, these boys rose up in rebellion against that society which refused to own them, and that order which organized the cohorts of vengeance. ”

“ Everywhere there are ruins and unburied dead, and shrunken, yellow-faced survivors in a mortal apathy. Here there are robbers, here vigilance committees, and here guerilla bands ruling patches of exhausted territory, strange federations and brotherhoods form and dissolve, and religious fanaticisms begotten of despair gleam in famine-bright eyes. It is a universal dissolution. The fine order and welfare of the earth have crumpled like an exploded bladder. ”

“ Desertion, already a frightful evil, will become the order of the day. And who will arrest the deserter, when most of those at home are engaged with him in the common cause of setting the Government at defiance? Organized bands of deserters will patrol the country, burning, plundering, and robbing indiscriminately, and our armies, already too weak, must be still further depleted at the most imminent crisis of our cause, to keep the peace and protect the lives and property of our citizens at home. ”

“ The miserable inhabitants, flying from their flaming villages, in part were slaughtered; others, without regard to sex, to age, to the respect of rank, or sacredness of function, fathers torn from children, husbands from wives, enveloped in a whirlwind of cavalry, and amidst the goading spears of drivers and the trampling of pursuing horses, were swept into captivity, in an unknown and hostile land. Those who were able to evade this tempest fled to the walled cities; but, escaping from fire, sword, and exile, they fell into the jaws of famine. ”

“ For many years, as I occasionally saw some field consecrated by revolutionary blood, or building Hallowed as a shelter of the heroes of that war, I have felt emotions of shame, such as every American ought to feel, on seeing the plow leveling the breast-works and batteries where our fathers bled, and those edifices, containing the council-chambers of men who planned the attack, the ambuscade, or the retreat, crumbling into utter ruin. ”

“ Gazing through the past years my fancy sees the ruin that has confronted the home-coming soldier—ashes instead of homes, burnt stubble instead of fences, the slaves on whose labor he had long depended for the cultivation of his fertile fields, with their bonds cast off, meeting him as freemen. ”

“ The people of these regions have lost everything: their houses are burned; their animals, even the rabbits, are gone; their farm implements are shapeless pieces of grotesquely melted iron. They live in temporary, patched shelters and in the houses built by the Society of Friends, or mass themselves in some nearby village that escaped destruction at the hands of the crown prince's retreating army. After a time in this silent country one gets the sense that destruction is normal, and tears start to one's eyes at the sight of an undestroyed French village smiling in the sun. ”

“ It is the plundering and sacking of our city, the profanation of our mosques, the ruin of our homes, the violation of our wives and daughters—cruel oppression, bigoted intolerance, whips and chains, the dungeon, the fagot, and the stake—such are the miseries and indignities we shall see and suffer; at least, those grovelling souls will see them who now shrink from an honorable death. ”

“ From this I still conclude, that no destruction of inhabitants by expulsion, captivity, war, pestilence or famine, is so permanently hurtful to population, as a revolution in that spirit which is necessary for the increase and support of numbers. ”

“ But the deserter's fate was only terrible; suffering without glory, "the pang without the palm." From those dreary fortress prisons where the "refractory" toiled in the garb of convicts, fed on bread and water, with shaven heads and fettered feet, no man ever came forth alive. ”

“ The bloody three-act tragedy so often performed in this unhappy country—the peasant flung out to perish by the wayside, the landlord murdered, the assassin dying on a gibbet—was not order, but anarchy. ”

“ Innumerable vagabonds and vagrants are still worse off, for, with no shelter or fireside, they sleep under the stars, and as they are without anything to care for, they are disposed to pull everything down.—Under the double pressure of insurrection and theory the demolition begins, while the fury of destruction goes on increasing until nothing is left of the razed edifice but the soil it stood on. ”

“ You set the homes of the conquerors on fire; but those buildings are speedily raised again, and it is our brothers, the slaves, who are forced to rebuild them. You distribute among the poor a part of the tribute that you levy upon the seigneurs and the prelates; but after a few days of abundance, misery weighs anew upon the unhappy population, and, by contrast, it is more painful than before. The coffers that you rifle must all be refilled by our brothers, the slaves, by dint of fresh and crushing labors. ”

“ The iron kettles of the boiling houses, and the bells which called them to their labors, were crushed into atoms, as if to destroy from the very face of the earth all memorials of former servitude. Twelve hundred families, once opulent and happy, were reduced to utter poverty, and driven in their destitution to subsist on public charity or private hospitality in their own or foreign countries. More than ten thousand of the rebels also had perished by the sword or by famine, and many hundreds of them had met their fate from the hands of the public executioner. ”

“ All this their eyes had looked upon,—earth's proudest city, wasted and thunder-scarred, lying in desolation, and the doom of oppressors traced on her ruins in the hand writing of God, glaring in letters of fire mingled with blood—a blackened monument of wrath to the uttermost against the stealers of men. ”

“ And to induce them to do so, they plundered the granaries, emptied the cellars, drew the seigniorial fish-ponds, demolished the castles of the nobles who resisted, and burned the convents. Opposition had inflamed the passions of these rude men; equality no longer satisfied them; they thirsted for blood, and swore to put to death every man who wore a spur.
At the approach of the peasants, the cities that were unable to resist them opened their gates and joined them. ”

“ When the creeping babe is immolated by the savages of the North, is it a dispensation of Providence? When the homesteads of the people are given to the flames and the cursed army of Abolitionists exult at their demolition, does the hand of our Heavenly Father direct the work of destruction? ”

“ Only slaves are seen here and there cultivating the lands of the Church and of the seigneurs, and the poor wretches bend under the weight of toil; not infrequently die of hunger or of maltreatment. The cities, once so rich, so flourishing by their commerce, are to-day ruined, almost depopulated, but being at least defended by their walls, they offer some measure of security to their inhabitants; and yet, the ceaseless civil wars between the sons of Clovis at times deliver even these places to the torch of the incendiary, to pillage and to massacre. ”

“ And when the number of the rebels daily increased, until they were past counting, and they no longer feared resistance, they began to show what they had in their minds. "Every single man who knew anything about the law of land-holding, whether clerks or venerable justices, and all the jurators of the land whom they had any reason to fear, they slew without compunction, declaring that the land could never enjoy freedom until these had been put to death. ”

“ Above all, however legitimate the revolt was, it caused his death, and you were one of the chiefs of the uprising. An abyss separates us in this world, Nominoë. Back in this manor after the burning of the Castle of Plouernel, I faced the reality without weakness. Our separation, the barriers that rendered our union impossible, weakened in nothing my love. That can not be affected by earthly causes. ”

“ Threats of dissolution, if executed, become rebellion and treason. The machinery of this government is now moving onward in its majestic course. Custom-houses, post-offices, land-offices, army, navy, are fulfilling their prescribed circle of duties. ”

“ In reading this history the mind becomes so accustomed to the devastation of provinces, the murder of peasants, and horrible outrages on all the decencies and sanctities of life,—that fire, famine and slaughter become mere commonplaces and matters of course. ”

“ Citizen Representatives!—A country of sixty leagues extent, I have the happiness to inform you, is now a perfect desert; not a dwelling, not a bush, but is reduced to ashes; and of one hundred and eighty thousand worthless inhabitants, not a soul breathes any longer. Men and women, old men and children, have all experienced the national vengeance, and are no more. ”

“ Who does not believe, that if these societies were broken up, their constitutions burnt, and the vast machinery with which they are laboring to regenerate mankind was stopped, that the black clouds of vengeance would soon burst over our world, and every city would witness the fate of the devoted cities of the plain? ”

“ The dread formalities and tyrannies of the law seized on the quiet village and tortured every soul in it: every one who had seen or heard or known aught of the dead man was questioned, tormented, harangued, examined, suspected. ”

“ But where are we wandering to pluck garlands from the tomb?
Retreat would bring us the woes of war, without its chances or its pride. The enemy, elate at our discomfiture, would press upon our rear. The landlord would use every privilege till he had reduced his farms to insurgentless pastures. The minister would rush in and tear away the last root of nationality. The peasant, finding his long-promised hope of freedom and security by moral means gone, and left unled to his own impulses, would league with his neighbour serfs, and ruin others, in the vain hope of redressing himself. ”

“ We see most vividly the shifting panorama of the siege,—the city in famine, under the assault, and in smoke; upon the streets the pining children, the stricken princes, the groups of men with sullen, famine-black faces, the heaps of slain, mothers feeding on the bodies of the infants whom their sapless breasts could not keep alive ”

“ The people, in a state of wild anarchy, set law and order at defiance, and with the cry, 'Viva la Santa Fede!' wild hordes ran through the streets plundering and burning the houses of the nobles, who they thought had sold them to the enemy. ”

“ I have seen their condition when many thousands were driven from their lands and homes, were persecuted, harassed, and driven like felons without redress, robbed, plundered, imprisoned, and put to death; and thousands of men, women, and children wandered houseless and homeless exiles in their own land, and fugitives flying from the rage of a lawless rabble, infuriated banditti, and bloodthirsty miscreants and murderers. ”

“ The entire stupendous edifice of popular government, temple and citadel of fallacies and abuses, had crashed to ruin. For centuries its fallen columns and scattered stones sheltered an ever diminishing number of skulking anarchists, succeeded by hordes of skin-clad savages subsisting on offal and raw flesh—the race-remnant of an extinct civilization. ”

“ With the prize in his hands, fires burst from every roof in every quarter. Three hundred thousand of the inhabitants have fled; a wind arises and fans the devouring flame; churches and [149] houses, temples and palaces, are wrapped in its relentless embraces; the convicts and the rabble run like demons through the streets, drunk with wine and reveling in excesses; soldiers, slaves, and prostitutes pillage the burning ruins, all wild and mad with the unholy lust of gain. ”

“ At least, for such of them as lived through the perils and hardships of the siege, the capture of their city, the waste of their property, the exile from their families and sufferings too many to recount, which are usually inflicted on the vanquished by the conqueror. ”

“ And a day or two later, it might be, the poison-fire 88swept through the fields and devoured the homes of those who had executed tribal justice; or a horde of destitution, too strong to be denied, drove them out; and, homeless in their turn, they swelled the tide of plunderers and vagrants.... Man, with bewildering rapidity, was slipping through the stages whereby, through the striving of long generations, he had raised himself from primitive barbarism and the law that he shares with the brute.
Very steadily the process of displacement continued. ”

“ From the prisons, the camps, the graves, the veldt, and from the womb of the future, that nation cries out to us to make a wise decision now, to take no step which might lead to the downfall or even to the extermination of their race, and thus make all their sacrifices of no avail. Our struggle, up to the present, has not been an aimless one. ”