Rialto

“ Full twenty times, the rioters, headed by one man who wielded an axe in his right hand, and bestrode a brewer’s horse of great size and strength, caparisoned with fetters taken out of Newgate, which clanked and jingled as he went, made an attempt to force a passage at this point, and fire the vintner’s house. Full twenty times they were repulsed with loss of life, and still came back again; and though the fellow at their head was marked and singled out by all, and was a conspicuous object as the only rioter on horseback, not a man could hit him. ”

“ That the disbanding the army after the peace of Riswick embolden’d the French King to set his Grandson on the Throne of Spain, and declare the Pretender, which involv’d us in a ten years war: That nothing more intimidated the Ministry in the last four years of Q. Anne’s reign, than the honesty and bravery of the gentlemen of the army.
As to the riot act, he says that power is necessary to prevent riots and tumults, and to disperse the people when so assembled. ”

“ Gondy bowed respectfully.
"Well, sir," said the queen, "what is your opinion of this riot?"
"That it is no longer a riot, madame," he replied, "but a revolt."
"The revolt is at the door of those who think my people can rebel," cried Anne, unable to dissimulate before the coadjutor, whom she looked upon, and probably with reason, as the promoter of the tumult. "Revolt! thus it is called by those who have wished for this demonstration and who are, perhaps, the cause of it; but, wait, wait! the king's authority will put all this to rights." ”

“ There the Europeans at once armed themselves as soon as the news of the riot reached them, and formed up in the square. Strong parties were landed from the ships of war, and were prepared to give so hot a reception to the mob should they come that way, that the rioters confined their work to the quarter in which it began. ”

“ Day by day the feeling on both sides grew stronger, till the non-union men were cemented together in a spirit of bitterest indignation, which materially lessened their zeal for work. Every act of violence intensified their rage. They armed themselves, in defiance of orders, tossed restraint to the winds, and sought the slightest opportunity of wreaking vengeance upon their enemies. Nor were the rioters less determined. Authority, after all, is but a hollow shell, which, once broken, is quickly disintegrated. ”

“ He rambled along in a maudlin way, and finally picked up an illustrated paper containing an account of the Turin riots, which angered him, and then and there being, that Italian soldier told us in German the story of what he called der grosser rebellion! To talk German in an allied country today is as much as one's life is worth. For a soldier to talk German is a crime; for a soldier to tell three foreigners about a riot in his country, which he, as a soldier behind machine guns had to suppress, killing hundreds, was mighty near to treason. ”

“ This seemed a weak inducement to draw a crowd so far, when more distinguished victims were all around them. It is more probable that some personal enemy of parties in the vicinity, finding the mob ready to follow any cry, led them thither; for one man seemed to be the leader, who, mounted on a fine cavalry horse, and brandishing a sword, galloped backwards and forwards through the crowd, giving his orders like a field officer. ”

“ Meeting an enemy on a field of battle, you go there to kill. The more you kill, and the quicker you do it, the better; but in this instance you had a division of six hundred men—my division was six hundred men. Colonel Guthrie was at Torrens, surrounded by a mob. The balance of my troops were at Twenty-eighth street, and here you had men who had fathers and brothers and relatives mingled in the crowd of rioters, and it was very natural for them to have a feeling that to fire then and kill these men, was like shooting their own relatives. ”

“ I made my way across the country, reached one of my garrisons, found the troops, fortunately, indignant at the treatment which the king's colours had received; marched at the head of two thousand men by daybreak, and by noon was in the Grande Place of Nantz; proceeded to try a dozen of the ringleaders of the riot, who had not been merely rebels, but robbers and murderers; and amid the acclamations of the honest citizens, gave them over to the fate which villains in every country deserve, and which is the only remedy for rebellion in any. ”

“ Durupt, shrugging his shoulders, shuts the door in the shouters’ faces. The demonstration becomes still more lively. The noise must be heard a long way off, for suddenly there comes a terrible growling, raucous and determined: “Zurück mit dem Pöbel!” [23] In an instant the crowd, numbering about fifty, disperses like a flight of sparrows. A single man, Georg, the commandant’s boot-polisher, has broken the back of the riot. He disappears. The corridors relapse into silence, the mournful silence of a cellar.... ”

“ Hence a riot of three days costs one hundred and twenty millions; that is to say, if we only regard the financial result, is equivalent to a disaster, shipwreck, or lost action, which might annihilate a fleet of sixty vessels of the line. Indubitably, riots, historically regarded, had their beauty; the war of the paving-stones is no less grand or pathetic than the war of thickets; in the one there is the soul of forests, in the other the heart of cities ”

“ You do not fear that the district troopers will come in to lay waste your fields, and trample you under foot at your own firesides. You call ‘father’ the one who is in command over you. Perhaps there will come a time when you will be more civilized, and you will break out in revolution; and you will wake terrified, at the tumult of the riots, and will see blood flowing through these quiet fields, and gallows and guillotines erected in these squares, which never yet have seen an execution.” [1] Thus moralized a Spanish traveler in 1842, just as that dolce far niente was drawing to its close. ”

“ Even if the military under General Brown and the police had not shown the mob that they were its masters, the arrival of so many regiments, occupying all the infected districts, was overwhelming evidence that the day of lawless triumph was over, and that of retribution had come. ”

“ Just then a man came from the crowd of rioters—there was a crowd collected in front of the round-house for the purpose of fighting the militia—and he jumped on to a flat car and drew a sword—he had a belt around him, but had no uniform—and he immediately ordered them to stop burning the cars and pillaging the trains, saying that they had come not to burn and pillage, but to fight the military. ”

“ From Baxter alone over two thousand rioters, mostly foreigners, started out, and by daylight the main body of the enemy reached the outskirts of the city, a long, irregular line of laughing, jostling, shouting men, constantly renewed at the rear until the procession covered miles of roadway. ”

“ Officials and clerks worked to exhaustion, satisfying demands, hoping to placate the mob and avert the unthinkable results of a riot. Countless soldiers swarmed the streets with fixed bayonets. But the bloodless witch has no claim to one single heart-beat of loyalty from the unpaid wretches who wear the Imperial uniform; and when by simply tying a white handkerchief on their arms they go over in groups of hundreds to the Revolutionists, they are only repaying treachery in its own foul coin.
Though I hate to leave Jack even for an hour, I have to get out each day for some fresh air. ”

“ But steps had been taken to organize and arm a large body of militia under an experienced officer, and now in the dim starlight their bayonets were seen gleaming, as they marched steadily forward on the dark, heaving mass that filled the street far as the eye could see. The rioters, however, instead of being intimidated at the sight, sent up a yell of defiance, and arming themselves with stones and brick-bats, hurled them in a blinding volley on the troops. ”

“ When the officers in command saw leading the rioters the very men to whose influence they largely owed their positions, they made but a show of resistance. The vengeance of the mob was allowed to burn itself out. ”

“ It was this battalion chief who cleared the Palace of the Chamber, which the rioters had invaded at six o’clock in the morning.
We walked on to the Place. Charging cavalry was whirling around us. At the angle of the bridge a dragoon raised his sword against a man in a blouse. I do not think he struck him. Besides, the Ministry of Marine had not been “taken.” A crowd had thrown a stone at one of the windows, smashing it, and hurting a man who was peeping out. Nothing more. ”

“ The city of Rio was founded by the Portuguese in 1567. In 1831, it was the theatre of a revolution, in which 6000 armed citizens were joined by the troops of the line in their opposition to the government, and in consequence of which Dom Pedro abdicated the throne in favor of his son Pedro II.
Riot and Tumult. Sedition, civil insurrection, disturbance, etc. A breach of the peace committed by an assembled multitude. Some degree of violence is incidental to a riot, and a degree of intimidation to the neighborhood. According to law a riot cannot take place unless three persons act in concert. ”

“ But since he is himself a solid and (I am happy to say) a living demonstration that the firing even on his own side must have been rather wild, I am inclined to give the benefit of the doubt also to the less elaborately educated marksmen. When disciplined troops destroy people so much at random, it would seem unreasonable to deny that rioters may possibly have been riotous. ”

“ The city had taken the rioting with a weary philosophy. It was tired of fighting. For two years it had labored at high tension for the European war. It had paid taxes and bought bonds, for the war. It had saved and skimped and denied itself, for the war. And for the war it had made steel, steel for cannon and for tanks, for ships and for railroads. It had labored hard and well, and now all it wanted was to be allowed to get back to normal things. It wanted peace. ”

“ A soldier belonging to a troop of the 14th, detailed to protect the council house, shot a rioter who had struck him with a stone, and this added to the rage of the mob. The streets were, however, cleared by the sabres of the dragoons, and were kept free during the remainder of the night. On Sunday the riot broke out afresh, and the sack of the mansion house was completed. The 14th were fiercely attacked, and, as they had no orders to retaliate, the men suffered severely. ”

“ The rioters soon became appalled at their punishment. Like a dark blue wave, with bloody clubs forming a crimson crest, that unfaltering rank of men steadily advanced and ingulfed them. All within reach went down. Those of the police who were wounded still fought on, or, if disabled, the ranks closed up, and there was no cessation in the fatal hail of blows. The rioters in front would have given way, had not the thousands in their rear pressed them forward to their fate. ”

“ Thus trapped, they turned on their own forces behind them, and tried to fight their way to safety, but the inexorable pressure kept on, and the defenders, watching and powerless, saw men fling themselves from the bridges and disappear in the water below, rather than advance into the machine-gun zone. The guns were not firing into the rioters, but before them, to hold them back, and into that leaden stream there were no brave spirits to hurl themselves. ”

“ In Italy, in Gaul, in southern Germany, apparently also in Spain and in England, men decked themselves for riot in the heads and skins of cattle and the beasts of the chase, blackened their faces or bedaubed them with filth, or wore masks fit to terrify the demons themselves. ”

“ This made the insurgents bolder; so they went on rioting away, striking off the heads of those who did not, at a moment's notice, declare for King Richard and the people; and killing as many of the unpopular persons whom they supposed to be their enemies as they could by any means lay hold of. In this manner they passed one very violent day, and then proclamation was made that the King would meet them at Mile-end, and grant their requests.
The rioters went to Mile-end to the number of sixty thousand, and the King met them there, and to the King the rioters peaceably proposed four conditions. ”

“ Never have natural obstacles told more potently on the fortunes of war than at Rivoli; for on the side where the assailants most needed horses and guns they could not be used; while on the eastern edge of their broken front their cannon and horse, crowded together in the valley of the Adige, had to climb the winding road under the plunging fire of the French infantry and artillery. ”

“ It was almost as if the perpetrators of these lesser conflicts had simultaneously realized that Law along the frontiers was diminished, and waited only long enough to be sure they were not caught alone in the looting and thievery. And a riot, once begun, is very difficult to bring under control. ”

“ The patriarch talked to the soldiers, but in vain, they pushed him roughly aside and clambered over one another until they pressed so close upon the czarina that she gave way, and hurried back into the palace, with her son and stepson, and then—for the moment—I thought that the end was at hand. The rioters howled like wolves and pressed forward; below a dark mass of men and a forest of cruel steel. ”

“ Thus, early in the reign of Henry VIII., at a time when there was great animosity against foreign merchants, of whom there were a great many beside the Hanse merchants of the Steelyard, there was a riot in which a great many houses of foreigners were destroyed, many persons were killed, Newgate was assailed and taken, eleven rioters hanged and 400 more taken before the King with halters round their necks to receive his pardon. ”