Vandals

“ But the Vandals, coming there at early dawn, thought it would not be to their advantage to destroy the doors of the house or to enter it in the dark, fearing lest, being involved in a night encounter, they might themselves destroy one another, and at the same time, if that should happen, provide a way of escape for a large number of the enemy in the darkness. ”

“ Men were seized in the fields, women torn from the wheel and the distaff, and children frightened from the pleasures of play. The vandals who followed in the wake of the soldiery, looting and pillaging, burning and destroying, yet calling themselves civilized Christians, were such a band of outlaws as is seldom seen even among the most savage and barbaric races. ”

“ They had come along with Northern vandals, to chronicle their rapes, arsons, plunders, and murders, and to herald them to the world as deeds of heroism, greatness, and glory. They are our vilest and most unprincipled enemies—far more deeply steeped in guilt, and far more richly deserving death, than the vilest vandal that ever invaded the sanctity of our soil and outraged our homes and our peace. We would greatly prefer to assist in hanging these enemies to humanity, than to show them any civilities or courtesies. ”

“ Let us, let all the Vandals,--the Moors can surrender as prisoners,--charge upon the foe together, and--He would never let me finish. 'That would be suicide,' he answered, 'and sin. We must bear patiently what God has imposed upon us as a punishment. If it is His will. He can yet save us, bear us away from here on the wings of His angels. But the end is approaching--of itself. The number of graves on the slope of the mountain is daily increasing.'"
"Yes, the row constantly lengthens; sometimes the high mounds of our Vandals surmounted by the cross!" ”

“ Our pursuit of the Vandals was checked only by our greed. The fallen and captive Vandals had many ornaments of gold and silver on their persons, their horses, and themselves; our heroes plundered every one before passing on. Our horsemen, who reached the camp first, did not venture, in spite of their longing to pillage, to enter it at once; they thought it impossible that a force so superior in numbers should not defend their own camp, their wives and children. ”

“ What annoyed me a great deal with these men was the really criminal way in which they—notwithstanding my instructions—always tried to smash my cameras and scientific instruments and to injure anything I possessed. Those men were vandals by nature. The more valuable an object was, the greater the pleasure they seemed to take in damaging it. ”

“ On the following morning, detachments of our cavalry scoured the country in every direction, capturing a great many rebels, who were destroying property and pillaging houses, passing themselves off as federal soldiers. It was a common game and one easily played, amid the panic and excitement that followed the fall of Bowling Green; the people having been made to believe there was no crime too vile for the "Northern vandals." ”

“ War, in its fairest form, implies a perpetual violation of humanity and justice; and the hostilities of Barbarians are inflamed by the fierce and lawless spirit which incessantly disturbs their peaceful and domestic society. The Vandals, where they found resistance, seldom gave quarter; and the deaths of their valiant countrymen were expiated by the ruin of the cities under whose walls they had fallen. ”

“ Doubtless it was bad enough; and the Vandals were not at all pleasant pagans. They persecuted the Christians wherever they laid hands on them.
Now, we may follow the fortune of these Vandals until they disappear from the great story altogether. They continued their bad work as pirates and persecutors of the Christians for the best part of a hundred years; and then there came against them a very great general of the Eastern Empire, Belisarius. ”

“ The Vandals demand a word of attention. Though they appear in history as early as the second century, they are peaceably disposed of and remain quiet in Pannonia till the beginning of the fifth century, when they attack Gaul; thence they overrun Spain, to be displaced by the western Goths, and cross to Africa, Each of the barbarian races seems to have had its one great man, and the Vandals had their Genseric, In Africa they numbered from fifty thousand to eighty thousand men, and took their turn at sacking the Imperial City. ”

“ The Goths, the Vandals, the Gepidæ, the Burgundians, the Alemanni, wasted each other’s strength by destructive hostilities: and whosoever vanquished, they vanquished the enemies of Rome. The subjects of Diocletian enjoyed the bloody spectacle, and congratulated each other, that the mischiefs of civil war were now experienced only by the barbarians. ”

“ Soon as they dawn, from hyperborean skies
Embodied dark, what clouds of Vandals rise! ”

“ There seem to be vandals in almost every community, and sometimes they seem to be especially numerous in small communities, perhaps because of the lack of police protection. Sometimes vandalism is wanton,—that is, it results from an apparent love of being destructive. Most often it is purely thoughtless. Few people would knowingly injure the property of another if they would stop to think of their feelings if another should injure THEIR property. ”

“ While taking our coffee, and waiting for the final order to march, some villain, belonging to the troops stationed at Centreville, set fire to the little Episcopal chapel that stood not far from us, and was the only building remaining in the little village which pretended to any appearance of modern architecture. Those vandals who [Pg 236] follow an army, bent on nothing but destruction, are among the unavoidable evils of war, and even the most severe discipline is insufficient to effectually arrest all mischief of the kind. ”

“ There must have been some innocent men among them." "In future we shall have to hold an inquiry into their guilt instead of merely shooting them." "The Vandals themselves could not have done more damage. ”

“ The Vandals in Africa.―Early in the 5th century the Vandals, who were even then Arian Christians, combining with the Alani and Suevi, made a descent from Pannonia upon Gaul in A.D. 406 and from thence upon Spain in A.D. 409, and made dreadful havoc of these rich and fertile lands. In A.D. 428 the Roman proconsul of Africa, Boniface, unjustly accused of treason by the Roman government, in his straits called in the aid of the Vandals. Their king Genseric went in A.D. 429 with 50,000 men. ”

“ Mr. Berry had no intention of leaving the scene of his ruined possessions to the mercy of vandals. Moreover, it seemed likely that with the abatement of the storm the neighboring village would turn out to view the devastation. ”

“ In 429 they crossed over into Africa, under their king Genseric, and conquered all the Roman dominions in that country. Genseric subsequently invaded Italy, and took and plundered Rome in 455. The Vandals continued masters of Africa till 535, when their kingdom was destroyed by Belisarius, and annexed to the Byzantine empire.
Van-foss. In fortification, a ditch dug without the counterscarp, and running all along the glacis, usually full of water.
Vanguard. That part of the army which marches in front.
Vanquish. To conquer; to overcome; to subdue in battle, as an enemy. ”

“ I was too heart-sick and indignant to seek another evidence of the lengths to which a conquering army can go in pitiless, unmeaning destruction, when nothing can result from such vandalism but hatred and revenge. ”

“ Here, neither do insignia of triumph call to mind the afflicting scenes of war, nor do emblems of conquest strike the eye of the travelled visiter, and damp his enjoyment by blending with it bitter recollections. Vandalism is the only enemy from whose attacks the monuments, here assembled, have been rescued. ”

“ Another problem that has constantly confronted every administration is vandalism. A vandal is any person who takes flowers or specimens and writes on or defaces natural objects, and his name is legion. The more cunningly contrived a work of nature becomes, the greater the temptation to remove it to one’s own premises. This urge reduces even dignified people to the most amazing behavior. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hence the hostility to arts and science, the tokens of refined civilization,—indiscriminate devastation of life and property perpetrated by the savage warriors, has given rise to the word "Vandalism." ”

“ In Paris, mobs roared through the streets nightly, sacking, burning, killing, unmolested, uninterrupted. The sun rose upon wrecked and smoking buildings, and upon mutilated corpses lying here, there, and yonder about the streets, just as they fell, and stripped naked by thieves, the unholy gleaners after the mob. ”

“ Fire, the sword, the hangman's noose, clubs, and crowbars will not be enough to satisfy the vengeance of an outraged people upon a cold-blooded wretch who came to this country solely for the purpose of perpetrating a crime more awful than anything that was ever known before! ”

“ In our own period it is immeasurably sadder and more astonishing to learn that, besides the losses arising from casual conflagrations to public and private libraries, the old vandalism is not extinct, and that nothing is sacred in its eyes, not even the priceless muniments of a cathedral church. ”

“ The mob had collected and organized to the number of several hundred, and were marching through the lower part of the city, dealing destruction in their course; the houses of respectable and worthy colored citizens were broken in upon, the furniture scattered to the winds, all they possessed destroyed or plundered, and they themselves subjected to the most brutal and savage treatment. ”

“ The population feast and drink, and sally out in parties, beating at empty covers, as if they contained tangible objects to hunt, and hallooing with all their might and main. Shots are fired, the Nabikems are torn up with violence, set in flames, and thrown into the river. ”

“ Outside, in the square, the mob grew in numbers, the panic increased, riot seethed up from among those black clusters of people. Continual fights burst out between groups of men, dock-labourers, and the guard in front of the building, the police. ”

“ Burglars, robbers, tramps, beggars, forgers, defaulters in abundance, jails, prisons, reform-houses, stand out palatially amid lawns and green woods and winding rivers. The silent darkness is occasionally lighted up by the lurid torch of the incendiary, and now and then we are treated to spectacular fireworks with powder and dynamite and bomb. ”

“ They shudder at the thought of the kicks, the bitings, the blows, the throwings down-stairs or out of the window, to be expected in such dreadful dens as the police have to visit: and then there are the perils of fires, and falling houses, and restive horses. ”

“ And at last, at bay in the corner, and beset by an infuriated mob of editors, blacklegs, politicians, and desperadoes, who raved and swore and flourished their weapons about my head till the air shimmered with glancing flashes of steel, I was in the act of resigning my berth on the paper, when the chief arrived, and with him a rabble of charmed and enthusiastic friends. Then ensued a scene of riot and carnage such as no human pen, or steel one either, could describe. People were shot, probed, dismembered, blown up, thrown out of the window. ”

“ Without a roll-call I could not exactly tell you how many are missing, but as we came along I noticed several falling out and going into the wine-shops with the rabble. They did not come back again. I had to shut my eyes to it. If I had attempted to prevent it, there would have been a more horrible slaughter than there was last night on the Boulevards, and, what is worse, the men who remained staunch would have been in a minority, and not able to stand their ground. The mob have got hold of the muskets of the National Guards. ”

“ The same vandalism, in varying degrees, has been [Pg 67] at work in every part of the land, and nothing has yet been done effectively to check it, whether by legislation, education, or appeal to public opinion: it seems to be absolutely no one's business to protect what ought to be a cherished national possession. ”

“ The whole city was in commotion, and before midnight the shouts of the multitude, the ringing of the alarum bells as if a great conflagration was raging, and the rattle of musketry, produced a fearful uproar. Two or three leading citizens endeavored to persuade the mob to disperse, and had, in a measure, secured their respectful attention, when a tall man, dressed in a scarlet cloak, and wearing a white wig, suddenly appeared among them, and commenced a violent harangue against the government officers and soldiers. ”

“ These are but some of the outrages committed by Hunter or his orders, and I will not insult the memory of the ancient barbarians of the North by calling them "acts of Vandalism." If those old barbarians were savage and cruel, they at least had the manliness and daring of rude soldiers, with occasional traits of magnanimity. Hunter's deed were those of a malignant and cowardly fanatic, who was better qualified to make war upon helpless women and children than upon armed soldiers. ”

“ The tendency to take summary vengeance, called vendetta, still 41 exists in the villages; where the people having no social amusements, nothing to read, nor any other resource than cards during the winter nights, are apt to quarrel over trifles; which, fanned by their local petty jealousies, assisted often by the generous nature of their wine, ripen into deadly feuds. ”