Gouge

“ During the continuance of those disastrous conflicts, thousands of brave men perished in arms, the axe of the executioner was seldom idle, great numbers of the nobility and gentry lost their lives in the field or upon the scaffold, property was usurped in consequence of wholesale confiscations, numberless innocent lives were sacrificed, and many happy homes were outraged. ”

“ The river gathers foam as it goes surging along, and while flinging up dense masses of spray, which descend again in silvery showers, roars and rages with terrific violence, sending forth wrathful sounds like the angry messages of some incensed deity, which tell of impending ruin. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A design is drawn by the artist, to whom the whole credit of the production generally belongs, with a brush on thin paper, which is then pasted face downwards on the block. The engraver, who is very rarely the designer, then cuts the outlines into the block with a knife, afterwards removing the superfluous wood with gouges and chisels. ”

“ Scores of time he and I went together into the dirty places, into the midst of the muck and ruin of war, across the fields where shells came whining, along the trenches where masses of men lived in the mud, under the menace of death. ”

“ Desolation, ruin, and pillage are pervading the rich fields of one of the most fertile and productive regions of the earth, and the incendiary's torch, firing plantations and valuable factories and buildings, is the agent marking the alternate advance or retreat of contending parties. ”

“ I am wise, I figure that a friendly quake will soon again set the earth aquiver, and once again it will destroy your city; and the walls will crumble, and my stone will drop and shatter the jailer’s head. And having shattered it, it will leave upon his soft waxy blood-grey brain the impress of my song of freedom, like the seal of a king, like a new commandment of wrath—and thus will the jailer go down to his grave. ”

“ Vast rents open at their very feet, licking with huge, flaming tongues the terrified people into their yawning mouths. And then the inundations. Mighty waves sweep over the land. The fierce enemies, Fire and Water, join hands to effect the destruction of a mighty nation. ”

“ Ambulance waggons block the way: our men succumb to flank attacks. Their officers have surrendered: their general is dead. The river is choked with corpses to its topmost banks: the fosses of the Great Wall are swimming over with blood. ”

“ If we had had the second sight and could have known what was to follow—the countryside laid waste with fire and sword, women and children turned out of their blazing homes to 176 perish on the bleak moors, the wearing of the tartan proscribed and made a crime punishable with death, a hundred brave Highlanders the victim of the scaffold—we should have quite despaired. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was as true of the men before the Revolution as of those before the Flood, that "they ate, they drank, they planted, they builded," heedless of the rising tide of divine and human wrath, until the torrent overflowed its bounds and swept them all away. ”

“ And then they blow up their fires so vigorously that their forges begin all at once to blaze, to the great peril of themselves and of all the neighbourhood round.' Nuisances of this nature the authorities put down by stringent by-laws, in the same way that they banished offensive occupations, such as the flaying of carcases, the dressing of skins, and the burning of bricks, outside the walls. ”

“ The dirt, corruption, and misery attending the crowding together of more than one hundred thousand souls into a city calculated for only forty thousand, with all the hardships attendant on a long siege, had generated a frightful epidemic, more relentless than the sword. ”

“ And fire is gone out of a rod of her branches, which hath devoured her fruit, so that she hath no strong rod to be a sceptre to rule. This is a lamentation, and shall be for a lamentation.—The savage application in the world-wide war of the rod of the Divine authority of rulers will cause revolt, revolution and anarchy to spring up, like a fire, which will bring to an utter end the denominational clusters, the fruit of the vine of the earth. ”

“ The frontier of our country bears witness to the alacrity and efficiency with which the general orders of the enemy have been executed in the devastation of farms, the destruction of the agricultural implements, the burning of the houses, and the plunder of everything movable. ”

“ Not only are the cities at war with each other, but they are plunged in ceaseless strife within the circuit of their ramparts. The people with the nobles, the burghs with the castles, the plebeians with the burgher aristocracy, the men of commerce with the men of arms and ancient lineage, Guelfs and Ghibellines, clash together in persistent fury. ”

“ As we advanced into the country the evidences of former strife everywhere met the eye, in the desolated plantations, houses burned to the ground or partially destroyed, and an air of ruin and desolation pervading all. ”

“ Body after body fed the deep, and still the gale held on. At last, when the wind and waves had lulled so much as to allow the gratings to be removed from our hatches, our consternation knew no bounds when we found that nearly all the slaves were dead or dying with the distemper. I will not dwell on the scene or our sensations. It is a picture that must gape with all its horrors before the least vivid imagination. ”

“ Suddenly there was a terrific explosion and houses, fences, trees, pavement stones, and all things on earth were hurled high into the air to come back a mass of ruins such as man never before had seen. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The gale had lasted nine days without intermission, and during all this time with so much violence that it was impossible to take off the gratings, release the slaves, purify the decks, or rig the wind-sails. When the first lull occurred, a thorough inspection of the eight hundred was made, and a death announced. As life had departed during the tempest, a careful inspection of the body was made, and it was this that first disclosed the pestilence in our midst. The corpse was silently thrown into the sea, and the malady kept secret from crew and negroes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Not being in possession of the western quarter, all our siege works may be destroyed in a vigorous sortie; for the besieged are audacious—they have shown themselves so; and the ramping wall which descends to the river from the west corner will always put our attack on the north front of the cité at the mercy of a vigorous effort. ”

“ From end to end it was dotted with castles, some held for one side, some for the other, and many mere robber strongholds, the scenes of gross and monstrous deeds, whose brute owners, knowing that they could never be called to account, made war upon all mankind, and wrung with rack and with flame the last shilling from all who fell into their savage hands. ”

“ The fair young boy and gray-bearded sire, the freeman and the serf, the living and the dead, all went down together, till a broad rampart stretched along our swinging, shouting front, and the glittering might of France surged up to that human dam and broke upon it like the futile waves, and went to pieces, and fell back under the curling yellow stormcloud of mid-battle. ”

“ On looking out, I witnessed the marching of troops, firing of cannons, field-officers in their full uniforms, all the city authorities wearing their official robes, with innumerable priests and friars bustling about from one end of the city to the other. My first impression was, that a destructive fire must have broken out somewhere, or that some frightful insurrection had taken place: but, on inquiry, what think you, reader, caused this simultaneous movement of the whole population of Principe, amounting in all to about sixty thousand? ”

“ Then besides this stable being, and the consequences of it, is the other thought which is attached to the emblem in a hundred places in Scripture, and that is defence. 'His place of defence shall be the munitions of rocks.' When the floods are out, and all the plain is being dissolved into mud, the dwellers on it fly to the cliffs. When the enemy's banners appear on the horizon, and the open country is being harried and burned, the peasants hurry to the defence of the hills, and, sheltered there, are safe. ”

“ So there was another struggle here, very fierce and bloody, and the place was only taken by groups of men who crawled round it in the mud, sprang at it out of shell-craters, and acted with individual cunning and courage. ”

“ Like the Paris mobs that followed shouting, in the wake of the tumbrels bound for the guillotine, these men came trooping back to the scene of execution, and as they came they bellowed hoarsely and they waved their arms.
Men react powerfully to environment; they put on rough ways with rough clothes. ”

“ Before these furious storms which drive governors underground and reduce their garrisons to powder, repeated sallies bravely repulsed, and vigorous attacks nobly sustained, signalized both the art of the besiegers and the courage of the besieged; consequently, sieges were of some length, and young men had an opportunity of gaining some knowledge. ”

“ The sudden convulsions of nature to which their soil has been subject from age to age are all charged with retribution for the sins of the people, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities of the plain. ”

“ Lighted by blazing brands and fed by petroleum in floods, fires were rising and spreading in every quarter; it was no longer civilized warfare, but a conflict of savages, maddened by the long protracted strife, wreaking vengeance for their dead, their heaps of dead, upon whom they trod at every step they took. ”

“ That species of fierce incitement was generally resorted to when extraordinary expedition had to be attained: when an inundation had to be averted, a river dammed before the flowing of the tide, a fortification constructed on the eve of attack, or a work concluded in anticipation of the advent of some great man. ”

“ In consequence of the state of society which then existed in the Highlands, where the people dwelt in tribes or communities and in sequestered glens, which were separated by great mountain ridges, by pathless forests, while deep defiles or narrow passes formed the only access to the country, sudden raids and onslaughts, if vigorously conducted, could be easily made, with great peril, however, and with certain subsequent vengeance. ”

“ The surface that is struck at may be bruised or even destroyed, if the blow be straight, but there are others of the many surfaces which will merely recoil and revolt, with cause, against the blow. And there are times when the blow misses the mark altogether, and revolt is complete from all sides. ”

“ The fortress required by a simple agricultural people is not a massive pile with towers and curtains, devised to resist the attacks of reckless soldiers, the assault of battering-trains, the sap of skilful engineers, or the slow reduction of famine. ”

“ The other is in the terrors of a siege; the hostile armies glitter under the walls, the women and children press into the defence, and crowd to the battlements. [Pg 349] In the first city, a quarrel rises, and wrong is made right, not by violence and fresh wrong, but by the majesty of law and order. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If, apart from these, there should be danger of rebellion or riot by savages, or of disturbance by brigands at home, or again of drought, flood or storm, of pestilence or famine such as would cause great disaster to the State or deep sorrow to the people, deign to sweep away and destroy it utterly before it takes form. ”

“ Local quarrels among rival landowners, the turbulent and brutal passions of the castle-holders, filled the land with violence and spread universal misery, from which there seemed to be no escape, as against the wrongdoers there was no redress. ”

“ The flames rage on, and with them rage a troop of desperadoes, before concealed, or set at large by the event. The wretched survivors are exposed to pillage, massacre, and every outrage: and thus, on all sides, Nature asserts her boundless capriciousness. ”

“ For giving unjustifiable, unwarrantable, cruel and bloody orders, directing whole villages to be destroyed, and the inhabitants thereof put to death by fire & sword, without any distinction to friend or foe, age or sex. ”

“ In another Neighboring Town, whose Inhabitants they thought, were more vigilant and watchful, having had the News of their horrid Acts and Deeds, they barbarously murdered them all with their Lances and Swords, destroying all, Young and Old, Great and Small, Lords and Subject without exception. ”