Demurrage

“ For destruction of railway trackage, bridges, and stations in enemy-controlled territory, it is necessary to gather together demolition materials. Troops must be trained in the preparation and use of demolitions, and a demolition unit must be organized in each regiment. ”

“ Now follow desperate disputes between the defenceless citizen and the irritated enemy—exorbitant demands, threats, and frequently ill-usage and peril of death—everywhere clamour, lamentation, and violence. Cupboards and desks are broken open, and everything, both valuable and valueless, plundered, spoiled, or destroyed, especially in those houses whose inmates have fled; for the property of an uninhabited house, according to the custom of war, falls to the share of the soldier. ”

“ The scenes of destruction and murder which we frequently passed in the villages and on our daily march, were dreadful. Houses and furniture burnt, men and women mutilated and murdered, lying about in the most disgusting and barbarous manner, some with their throats cut, some with their eyes and ears gone, and others cut up and most dreadfully exposed; all this for revenge, because they would not, or could not, supply the French army with provisions, and in the hope that these savage proceedings would terrify others into instant compliance. ”

“ I consider all inhabitants responsible for destruction or damage to railroad installations, waterways with their installations, telephone cables and Post Offices occurring within their districts.
The population of such communities may therefore expect reprisals in the form of seizure of property and destruction of houses or groups of houses. ”

“ This section has been the hot-bed of lawless bands, who have, from time to time, depredated upon small parties on the line of army communications, on safeguards left at houses, and on all small parties of our troops. Their real object is plunder and highway robbery. To clear the country of these parties that are bringing destruction upon the innocent as well as their guilty supporters by their cowardly acts, you will consume and destroy all forage and subsistence, burn all barns and mills and their contents, and drive off all stock in the region the boundaries of which are above described. ”

“ And as with California, so elsewhere. Every Granger state was ravaged with violence and washed in blood. First, disorder was precipitated by the secret agents and the Black Hundreds, then the troops were called out. Rioting and mob-rule reigned throughout the rural districts. Day and night the smoke of burning farms, warehouses, villages, and cities filled the sky. Dynamite appeared. Railroad bridges and tunnels were blown up and trains were wrecked. The poor farmers were shot and hanged in great numbers. ”

“ About five of them jars of preserves blew up with loud reports. Of course everyone's first thought was that a German plot was on to lay Horticultural Hall in ruins with dynamite. It sounded such. No one thought it was merely these strange preserves that had been working overtime in that furnace.
Women screamed and strong men made a dash for the door over prostrate bodies. And then a lot more explosions took place. The firing became general, as the reports say. Bottle after bottle shot its dread contents into the fray, and many feeble persons was tromped on by the mob. ”

“ It was the signal for a free fight. Armed, all of them, the smugglers dropped their burdens and turned about. Shots rang out, the pistols flashed fire, cries of men arose; revenue men fell to the ground, smugglers bit the dust, but it seemed that the officers must win, when suddenly there was a rush. Under cover of the darkness the men in the cave had slipped out, made a detour, and then, with shouts and shots, fell upon the revenue men, and in a few minutes had put them to flight. ”

“ The mob commenced plundering the citizens of their bedding, money, wearing apparel and everything of value they could lay their hands upon. Much property was destroyed by the burning of houses, logs, rails, corn cribs, boards, etc., the using of corn and hay, the killing of cattle, sheep and hogs, etc., and all this without regard to owners, or asking leave of any one. In the meantime, men were abused, and women insulted, and treated with violence by the troops, while the men were kept prisoners. ”

“ But it points to the dreadful sequence of aggressions and crimes I have recited, it points to the weariness of flesh, the exhaustion of resources, and the destruction of all that was beautiful or useful in so much of the world, and to greater potentialities for destruction in the days to come. It is not necessary among the ruins of this ancient and beautiful city with untold members of its civilian inhabitants still buried in its rubble, to argue the proposition that to start or wage an aggressive war has the moral qualities of the worst of crimes. ”

“ They only found isolated houses standing in the midst of ruins. Piles of burned rubbish marked where the streets had stood, and the ruins were encumbered with the bodies of men and animals. Several men were to be seen still hanging; these were the incendiaries, real or suspected, who had first been shot and then strung up. The soldiers passed by these ghastly trophies with complete indifference.
The army had wine and sugar in abundance, but neither bread nor meat. In vain were detachments sent into the forests where the peasantry were concealed with their cattle:—the men returned empty-handed. ”

“ They hanged men by the feet in the chimneys of their own houses, and lighted a fire under them in order that, suffocated and singed by the clouds of smoke that rose upward and the flames that licked their faces, they be driven to disclose where they had hidden their money and valuables. Often the victims possessed none of these, and they perished, the prey to barbarous greed. Other soldiers stripped the last shred of clothing from the women and girls whom they outraged, and drove them naked into the fields where they were left to die of hunger and cold. ”

“ The town had been laid in ashes, a number of the inhabitants murdered and cast into their burning houses, because they presumed to defend their persons and property, or to be avenged on a cruel, vindictive invading enemy. I saw the inhabitants, after the fire was out, endeavouring to find the burnt bones of their relatives amongst the rubbish of their demolished houses. The streets, in many places, were literally flooded by the fat which ran from the piles of barrels of pork burnt by the enemy.—They fully executed their design. ”

“ It was dreadful within to go from room to room and view the total destruction there. The heaps of ashes showed that the devastation was complete.
And what was the effect of this spectacle on the burghers?
Fear? Dismay?—No, resistance! Everyone who contemplated the ruins only felt the more deeply the wrong that was done to our people. Here was a nation which prided itself on its love of freedom, depriving a little people of their independence; and doing this in the most cruel manner, robbing them of their cattle and destroying their dwellings. ”

“ The work of plunder was carried on even during the battle; and those hardened and abandoned wretches who follow the camp, like vultures, to prey upon the corpses of the dead, had the temerity to press forward beneath a heavy fire to rifle the pockets of the officers who fell of their watches and money. The most daring and atrocious of these marauders were women. ”

“ At a cost of half a million of money (English) , houses worth twelve millions were destroyed. Why? France was mad. So hurriedly was this destruction effected, that hundreds of the workmen themselves were buried in the ruins.
Life, however, was cheap.
Rags only were to be seen—a decent dress was equivalent to condemnation. The city was dead but for the thunder of fallen houses, the roar of cannon and the rattle of musketry mowing down suspected people, and the shrill cry of the ragged as they marked another head fall beneath the guillotine knife. ”

“ V. To army-corps commanders is intrusted the power to destroy mills, houses, cotton-gins, &c., and for them this general principle is laid down: In districts and neighborhoods where the army is unmolested no destruction of such property should be permitted; but should guerillas or bushwhackers molest our march, or should the inhabitants burn bridges, obstruct roads, or otherwise manifest local hostility, then army-corps commanders should order and enforce a devastation more or less relentless according to the measure of such hostility. ”

“ They annoyed without weakening the enemy, just as a spiteful insect may worry and enrage a huge bull, without doing him any serious hurt. Really they did a vast deal more damage to our own cause, by the demoralization caused in the army from a desire upon the part of many to share in the captures, which the partisan corps appropriated to their own use, which induced quite a number to desert their colors for the sake of plunder. ”

“ The dismay and terror of the inhabitants can scarcely be conceived. They had two enemies, the fire in their houses and the soldiery without. Many who attempted to bear away portions of their goods were robbed by the way. Trunks and bundles were snatched from the hands of hurrying fugitives, broken open, rifled, and then hurled into the flames. Ornaments were plucked from the necks and arms of ladies, and caskets from their hands. Even children and negroes were robbed. ”

“ And if the tale were spread that the destruction had been wrought by his workmen while drunk, who would doubt it?
Like shadows the band of Mexican desperadoes would come, dynamite the dam, fire the buildings, stampede the horses, and like shadows vanish again. In the unexpectedness of the raid, in the confusion, in the dim light, no one would with certainty be able to say who the assailants were. A scheme ferocious in its conception and diabolical in its cunning! But there was one flaw––the element of chance. Chance had given Weir warning.
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A strong man warned is a strong man armed. ”

“ It is difficult to account for the utter want of visible evidence. In the processes of clearing a field for military action, when it becomes essential to remove some obstructive mud-built village and trace a clear and free zone for artillery fire, it is often found that the work of destruction is exceedingly difficult. Only with the most careful management can the debris be so dispersed that it affords no better cover to the enemy than the village which it 196 once represented. ”

“ There were not many families unbereft, not many women who had not the loss of a father, or a husband, or a brother, or of a friend to deplore. In the regions in which military operations had taken place, the destruction of property had been great, and while most of that destruction seemed necessary in the opinion of military men,—in the eyes of the sufferers it appeared wanton, cruel, malignant, devilish. ”

“ A numerous party of men, with a factor at their head, entered the district, and commenced pulling down the houses over the heads of the inhabitants. In an extensive tract of country not a human dwelling was left standing, and then, the more effectually to prevent their temporary re-erection, the destroyers set fire to the wreck. In one day were the people deprived of home and shelter, and left exposed to the elements. Many deaths are said to have ensued from alarm, fatigue, and cold. ”

“ This made our appeals to the authorities more deeply solicitous as the danger increased, and very soon after this the mobs commenced their depredations, which was a general system of plunder, tearing down fences, exposing all within the field to destruction, and driving off every animal they could find. ”

“ To judge by the indescribable mess, and by the mass of material left littered about, the enemy must indeed have beat a hasty retreat. The dug-outs were filthy to the last degree, and there was no sign of any system of sanitation having been used by these people, who considered their “Kultur” to be superlative, and who desired to impose it on the rest of mankind. All through the campaign, whenever one had the opportunity of inspecting hostile trenches and billets, one always found the same thing, filth and lack of sanitation. ”

“ Robbery and plunder became common, and that not only on the track of armies or the route of smaller bodies of soldiers, for bands of mere marauders, taking up the cry of the faction that happened in any neighbourhood to have the ascendancy, plundered houses, robbed travellers, and were guilty of all sorts of violence. ”

“ The army of tramps that grew up after the disbandment of the armies in the field, and has kept up its muster roll, together with the in-rush of the Italian tide, have ever since opposed a stubborn barrier to all efforts at permanent improvement. The more that has been done, the less it has seemed to accomplish in the way of real relief, until it has at last become clear that nothing short of entire demolition will ever prove of radical benefit. Corruption could not have chosen ground for its stand with better promise of success. ”

“ The narrow village streets were littered ankle deep with a muddy, rotting pot-pourri in which one detected broken glass, bits of brick, cartridges, roof slates, broken bottles, shreds of clothing, shells, fragments, shrapnel cases, and kepis. Dead men lay in the gutters, covered with filth to such an extent that one almost failed to recognize what they were. ”