Impi

“ As all our hope depends on brutal force on quick destruction, misery and death; soon may we see dark ruin stalk around, with murder, rapine, and inflicted pains, estates confiscate, slav'ry and despair, wrecks, halters, axes, gibbeting and chains, all the dread ills that wait on civil war;---how I could glut my vengeful eyes to see the weeping maid thrown helpless on the world. Her sire cut off.---Her orphan brothers stand while the big tear rools down the manly cheek. ”

“ Think how those bloody warfares are powerful for all sorts of evils and crimes; how they turn human beins into wild beasts of prey; think how humanity, and mercy, and purity and all goodness are trod down under the feet of the great armys; and how the more ghastly army of pestilence, and disease, and crime, and want, foller on after them—a phantom host shadderin’ the land for years, mightier for evil than the army they foller. ”

“ Three poor beings, almost newborn, unconscious, deserted, orphaned, alone, lisping, smiling, were seen face to face with civil war, retaliation, the frightful logic of reprisals, murder, carnage, fratricide, rage, malice, all the Gorgons, and yet triumphant. ”

“ The tolling of bells—the groans of the dying and wounded—the shrieks of mothers, widows and orphans—the flight of soldiers—the rush of the inhabitants—the cry of revenge—popular fury rising into a tornado of vengeance—all combined to create a scene of consternation and horror at which imagination recoils, description quails, sympathy trembles, humanity bleeds. It is a commentary, eloquently strong, upon the gross impropriety of quartering soldiers upon citizens—of enforcing civil law by military force—of invading the sanctity of domestic peace and private enjoyment. ”

“ And think: how can this fiery faith ever be killed, By that battered, single-fanged monster you call "civilization"? [5] My friend! Leave not my homeland to the hands of villainous men! Render your chest as armor and your body as trench! Stop this disgraceful rush! For soon shall come the joyous days of divine promise... Who knows? Perhaps tomorrow? Perhaps even sooner! View not the soil you tread on as mere earth - recognize it! And think about the shroudless [6] thousands who lie so nobly beneath you. You're the noble son of a martyr, take shame, hurt not your ancestor! ”

“ What apprehension dared not to suspect, what fancy could not dream of, no eye had ever beheld and no tongue ever uttered, blazes before us: the passions dart in rays resistless from the centre. Fear, terror, conviction, wrestle with dignity and courage in the centurion; convulse brutality, overwhelm violence, enervate resistance, absorb incredulity in the guard. ”

“ One man—alone, dismounted, inadequately armed—in the vast heart of an unknown country, tracked down by fleet-footed pitiless destroyers, stung to a frenzy of massacre by a twofold incentive—blood feud for a comrade slain, and the fanatical dictates—or supposed dictates—of the most merciless religion in the world. ”

“ The tents of life and joy are down. The generals practise their generalship, boasting of the blood they shed, competing one with the next in inciting to violence. ‘With this sword,’ saith one of them, ‘I beheaded a people!’ And another: ‘I toppled a nation to the ground!’ And yet another: ‘I brought a government down!’ On such things do men pride themselves, in such do they glory! ”

“ Let all their wickedness come before thee - That is, Thou wilt call their crimes also into remembrance; and thou wilt do unto them by siege, sword, famine, and captivity, what thou hast done to me. Though thy judgments, because of thy long-suffering, are slow ”

“ Let us not even talk of `exterminating war'! that unnatural crime which would harrow up our souls with the pangs of remorse, and haunt our repose with the dread of retaliation — which would draw down upon our cause the curse of heaven, and make our very name the odium of all generations. ”

“ May the roar of Faction, thirsting for evil, never in this place be heard, nor the dust that drinks the dark blood of fellow-citizens bring to the State, from passion for revenge, the doom of retaliation. ”

“ And shall those who ought to be "the light of the world" and "the salt of the earth," dishonor their high calling, and defile their garments, by engaging in the conflicts of human ambition, violence and revenge? Shall they lust after the dainties of cannibalism, admire the splendors of martial idolatry, and delight themselves in the acts of mortal cruelty! ”

“ My right hand shall not be sparing upon sinners, neither shall the sword cease over them who spill the innocent blood on the earth. Fire shall proceed from out of my wrath, and devour the foundations of the earth, and sinners as if they were inflamed straw. Woe be unto them who offend, and observe not my commandments, saith our Lord, I will not forbear them. ”

“ If, indeed, we have incurred the divine displeasure, and it be necessary to chastise this people with the rod of his vengeance, I would humbly prostrate myself before Him, and implore his mercy, to visit our favored land with war, with pestilence, with famine, with any scourge other than military rule, or a blind and heedless enthusiasm for mere military renown. ”

“ There never was a more momentous and sure truth pronounced, than that pronounced by Christ,—“They who take the sword, shall fall by the sword.” If they do not fall by its edge, they will by its hilt. It is under this evil that we are now labouring. As a nation we have fallen, through war, into all our present misery and crime. ”

“ Up, then, and be doing; the blood of martyrs, reeking upon scaffolds, is crying for vengeance; the bones of saints, which lie whitening in the highways, are pleading for retribution; the groans of innocent captives from desolate isles of the sea, and from the dungeons of the tyrants' high places, cry for deliverance ”

“ Is it any wonder that soldiers flushed with victory, after one of the hardest campaigns ever endured by men, should indulge—some of them—in unwarranted atrocities after finding such evidence of barbarism, and while more than forty of their comrades were weltering in their own blood upon the field? ”

“ Some persons even, going still great and greater lengths in the iniquity and license of their barbarity, disdained all blunter weapons, and took up the most efficacious arms of all, fire and iron, and slew many with the sword, and destroyed not a few with flames. (68) And the most merciless of all their persecutors in some instances burnt whole families, husbands with their wives, and infant children with their parents, in the middle of the city, sparing neither age nor youth, nor the innocent helplessness of infants. ”

“ We passed along through all the horrid varieties of misery, guilt, and riot that could find their place in a great public calamity; groups gazing in wo on the wreck of their fortunes in vapor and fire; groups plundering in the midst of the flame; crowds of rioters, escaped felons, and murderers, exulting in the public ruin, and dancing and drinking with Bacchanalian uproar; gangs of robbers stabbing the fugitives, to strip them; revenge, avarice, despair, profligacy, let loose naked; undisguised demons, to swell the wretchedness of this tremendous infliction upon a blood-covered empire. ”

“ He felt, without knowing why, the lust of violence which comes to the soldier in battle who wants to run away until the moment when the first shot has been fired, and then—all fear and moral conscience gone in an instant—forges his path with shouts and oaths to where danger is greatest and death most sure. ”

“ It was they who, for years, destroyed the harvests, shed torrents of blood, smote with the sword or the axe of the guillotine, crowded war upon war, heaped ruins upon ruins, bringing misery and disgrace to all mankind. ”

“ Men, women, and children were every one inhumanly murdered in cold blood. * * * The barbarous men who committed the atrocious act, in defiance of government, of all laws, human and divine, and to the eternal disgrace of their country and color, then mounted their horses, huzzaed in triumph, as if they had gained a victory, and rode off unmolested. ”

“ Unfit art thou, O my gentle one, to do battle with the wickedness of wicked men, and with the cunning arts of the adversary. Verily thou wilt be led as a lamb to the slaughter. Hast thou fathomed the depth of the pit of destruction? ”

“ Their rage, knowing no abatement, pursued you abroad, and drove you from one territory to another. Recall the cruel indignities which you suffered; how you were dragged from the tribunal and the altars; how no place, however sacred, could shelter you against their violence. Others, torn from their wives, their children, their parents, after putting an end to their miserable lives, were deprived of funeral rites; for these tyrants imagined their government so firmly established that even the vengeance of the gods was unable to shake it. ”

“ Slaves, and fair wives, and pillage rare:
The wealth of cities: teeming lands.
And if the world, once drunk with blood,
Sated, has turned from arms to peace,
Man hath not lost his ancient lusts;
The weapons change; war doth not cease.
The mother in the stifling den,
The brain-dulled child beside the loom,
The hordes that swarm and toil and starve—
We laugh, and tread them to their doom.
They shriek, and cry their prayers to Christ ”

“ After long ages of barbaric night, of slavery, of misery, these beings cut in ebony begin to robe themselves as men; on the battle field they have at last put on the virile toga dyed in blood, not now drawn by the lash from the back of the wretched chattel, but from the heart of the man face to face with his oppressor on the field of righteous battle. Rude and uncultured, they hold up to you hands hard with labor, still bleeding from the scarcely fallen manacles, and implore aid and manly mercy. ”

“ The swords, always the swords! Thus the best of things turn to evil through abuse and hot-headedness! Yes, the sword, resistance, revolt carried to the point of martyrdom whenever your rights are violated by force! ”

“ On the day which the oppressors hoped
To perform a slaughter among God's protected people,
The law was changed and they fell as corpses.
They were burnt, disfavored, defeated, and attacked. {Poor in number...}
Therefore, let Your name be lifted up and exalted.
Your splendor covers the heavens
When you lift up the humble ones, who are left to destruction.
Your praise covers the world to its very ends. {Poor in number...}
Consider our current disgrace, and see our suffering.
Rise up in Your anger against the oppressing enemy. ”

“ Hunted on all sides, insulted by unceasing and brutal menaces, they felt the blended influence of terror and indignation—by the first they were impelled to become voluntary slaves to the bloody fanatics, whose wild energies seemed alone proportionate to the danger; by the latter their gentler feelings were suspended, and the military spirit with all its virtues and all its vices seized at once a whole nation. ”

“ But the moment the law from a threat becomes an act, and the sentence goes forth, and the torture begins, a new but unavoidable train of evils encounters us. There is war implanted in the very bosom of society—hatred, and the giving and the sufferance of pain. ”

“ The State resembles an army; punishments must inspire terror; the idea of war is ever present. Such instincts, such a history, raises before them with tragic severity the idea of life; death is at hand, wounds, blood, tortures. The fine purple cloaks, the holiday garments, elsewhere signs of gayety of mind, are stained with blood and bordered with black. ”

“ Let an ultra-civilized, hyper-refined man stand between the slayer and his victim and watch the life blood's fitful spurts from a wrecked artery, and all his Veneer of refinement and civilization is burned up in a blast of horror and rage. ”

“ In furtherance of this unholy violence we cultivated a sense of honor, a chivalrous fortitude, a sterling adherence to truth, an abhorrence of falsehood, and above all of treachery, virtues which filled us with an enthusiasm that blended an unrighteous cause with exalted feelings, and blinded us to the coarse criminality of our proceedings. ”

“ No large acquaintance with the character of warfare is necessary to prove that when elemental anger, hate and fear prevail, civilized conventions are abandoned and the most savage instincts determine conduct. Homes are looted and burned, women and children are abominably treated, and many innocents are murdered outright or starved to death. ”

“ Better die as warriors bold, Than be hunted, tracked and sold; Living days in misery rife, For the coward’s bounty—life! Warriors, rally to the field; Teach the lordly foe to yield; Spurn his counsels—spurn his laws; Strike alone for freedom’s cause ”

“ There falleth so continually before the eyes of our heart a fearful imagination of this terrible thing: his mighty strength and power, his high malice and hatred, and his incomparable cruelty, with robbing, spoiling, burning, and laying waste all the way that his army cometh; then, killing or carrying away the people thence, far from home, and there severing the couples and the kindred asunder, every one far from the other, some kept in thraldom and some kept in prison and some for a triumph tormented and killed in his presence ”

“ The bursting in of mercenaries and bigots tumultuously
and disorderly,
Roar, flames, blood, drunkenness, madness,
Goods freely rifled from houses and temples, screams
of women in the gripe of brigands,
Craft and thievery of camp-followers, men running,
old persons despairing,
The hell of war, the cruelties of creeds,
The list of all executive deeds and words, just or
unjust,
The power of personality, just or unjust.
5. Muscle and pluck forever! ”