Massacre

“ The shouts, the blaze and smoke of fire-arms, the terrible detonations, the sight of plunging horses and their riders, with the sudden fury of the onset, paralyzed with terror the multitude of unarmed attendants, who fell the victims of a horrible massacre. ”

“ They have not, it is true, taken into their own hands the hatchet and the knife, devoted to indiscriminate massacre, but they have let loose the savages armed with these cruel instruments; have allured them into their service, and carried them to battle by their sides, eager to glut their savage thirst with the blood of the vanquished and to finish the work of torture and death on maimed and defenseless captives. ”

“ As to this massacre, God forbid that I should say a single word in defense of it! As a white man and a Christian, I feel it is an act of horrible atrocity; but it should not make such an impression upon your people, who make wars solely to obtain victims, whom they may sacrifice at the altars of their gods; and who, every year, slay in cold blood fully twenty-five thousand people who have done them no wrong. By the side of such horrible slaughter as this, the murder of six hundred, the other day, was but a drop in the ocean of blood annually shed here. ”

“ It is impossible for an outsider to tell the tale of that massacre, for massacre it was, the people falling upon and doing to death the unfortunate woman and the children who were clustering round her. ”

“ Murder itself might have lost its horrors to one who must have been but too familiar with the spectacle of massacre by wholesale upon unresisting crews, upon passengers enfeebled by sickness, or upon sequestered villagers, roused from their slumbers by the glare of conflagration, reflected from gleaming cutlasses and from the faces of demons. ”

“ But as we cannot live without yielding to this natural and imperious instinct of death, we relieve ourselves, from time to time, by wars. Then a whole nation slaughters another nation. It is a feast of blood, a feast that maddens armies and that intoxicates civilians, women and children, who read, by lamplight at night, the feverish story of massacre. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A swift massacre, a terrible slaughter, comes and goes like an earthquake or a tornado, and stuns rather than debases; but this long, steady succession of horrible executions and frightful scenes changed the very nature of the inhabitants, and they became a prey to a spirit demoniacal rather than human. ”

“ We might multiply indefinitely these anecdotical scenes of the massacre, most of them brutally ferocious, others painfully pathetic, some generous and calculated to preserve the credit of humanity amidst one of its most direful aberrations. History must show no pity for the vices and crimes of men, whether princes or people ”

“ 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. ”

“ Indeed, the day which followed a massacre was always kept as a holiday, everyone leaving his work undone and coming out to stare at the slaughtered victims. In this case, a man wishing to amuse the crowd took his pipe out of his mouth and put it between the teeth of the corpse—a joke which had a marvellous success, those present shrieking with laughter. ”

“ This massacre, the most horrible that was ever seriously contemplated in the brain of man, was to be executed under the pretense that it was an humanitarian measure. In the name of humanity, they proposed to undertake the midnight assassination of millions of men, women, and children, and to contend for justification for their actions. The word, with Brown, was a convenience, or an interchangeable term. ”

“ While thus, on one side, went the agent, with his cumbrous accompaniments of law-officers and parchments, police constables and bailiffs, to effect a distress or an ejectment; the midnight party with arms patrolled the country, firing the haggards and the farmhouses, setting all law at defiance, and asserting in their own bloody vengeance the supremacy of massacre. ”

“ To our surprise and dismay we found that the massacre of Wednesday, which might have been explained though certainly not excused on the ground of excitement in the heat of battle, the flush of victory, and the knowledge of dead comrades 599mutilated, was being continued in cold blood now. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were spent by the soldiery in murder and pillage from dawn to dark, in mutilation, in every conceivable kind of nameless atrocity, until the town became a ghastly Inferno to be remembered with a fearsome shudder until one’s dying day. ”

“ Severe measures then appear to the most mildly disposed among them as imperatively called for, and, however bloody the massacre that follows, no qualms of conscience ensue: it is a dire necessity for the sake of peace. ”

“ Jaded systems are regularly recuperated by massacre. Men arm themselves—men who roar about ‘rights,’ and even ministers of mercy—and go out on killing expeditions with as little compunction as savages put on war-paint. ”

“ They slaughtered their victims sometimes one by one, sometimes in groups, often in masses. They were not content only with killing. At one place they organised round the massacre such tragic scenes, and at another displayed such refinements of cruelty, that reason falters in face of their acts, and asks what terrible madness has brought this race to such low depths? ”

“ It will thus appear, that whilst everything upon the surface of society wore a calm and peaceful aspect, whilst not one note of preparation was heard to warn the devoted inhabitants of woe and death, a gloomy fanatic was revolving in the recesses of his own dark, bewildered, and overwrought mind, schemes of indiscriminate massacre to the whites. ”

“ There can be no question that the pursuit was simply a massacre, where fleeing women, with infants in their arms, were shot down after resistance had ceased and when almost every warrior was stretched dead or dying on the ground. ”

“ A sense of the ghastly futility of the horrible massacre in Europe overwhelmed multitudes of men and women who had exerted the last vibration of spiritual energy for the sake of victory, now that all was over, and the cost was counted. ”

“ The massacre was ended, the insurrection had been drowned in blood. The few rebels who survived the carnage were prisoners; the victors, in the first moment of enthusiasm, had shot several, and it required the most energetic interference on the part of the officers to check this rather too summary justice. ”

“ But it may briefly be stated that the truth lies probably in a middle course of reasoning—that the massacre was political in conception and religious in execution; or, in other words, that statecraft deliberately made use of fanaticism as of a tool; that the massacre was brought about by a sudden determination begotten of opportunity which is but another word for Chance. ”

“ The bloody drama opened with the massacre of nearly every Christian man within the Moorish borders,—and that too with circumstances of a refined and deliberate cruelty, of which, happily, few examples are to be found in history. ”

“ There were no women or children in the valley at the time of the massacre ; only the men in charge of great herds of stock.
This meant a great deal to me. I began to reflect on what it would lead to. The affair, no matter who was to blame, would be called another dreadful massacre by the bloodthirsty savages ; of this I was certain. Possibly it was a massacre, but the Indian account of it shows them to have been a s perfectly
justified as ever one human being can be for taking the life of another. ”

“ In this butcherly massacre at Paris, there were about four thousand houses robbed and plundered, and above five hundred barons, knights and gentlemen, who were chief officers in the war; with abundance of noble young gentlemen, ladies and gentlewomen, inhumanly murdered, who little expected such a bloady fate ”

“ Indiscriminate massacre ensued, accompanied with every conceivable act of brutality. For four hours the butchery continued, as attics, closets, cellars, chimneys, and vaults were searched, and the terrified victims were dragged out to die. Some leaped from the windows and endeavored to escape through the Garden. ”

“ In a few simple, indignant words he asked people to consider what a society was worth which had to be defended by the massacre of unarmed citizens, and called on the Government to withdraw their state of siege and put the general and his officers who fired on the people on their trial for murder. ”

“ Acting before high Heaven a direr part,
Sport with the weapons that shall pierce his heart!
If o'er the southern wave [64] we turn our sight,
More dismal shapes of hideous woe affright: 310
Grim-visaged War, that ruthless, as he hies,
Drowns with his trumpet's blast a brother's cries;
And Massacre, by yelling furies led,
With ghastly grin and eye-balls rolling red!
O'er a vast field, wide heaped with festering slain,
Hark! how the Demon Passions shout amain, [Pg 111]
And cry, exulting, while the death-storm lowers,
Hurrah! the kingdoms of the world are ours! ”

“ They hurried northward feverishly, pursued always by an immense force, subject to continuous cold rains, obliged to leave at every stopping-place the wounded and the sick, the women and babes, to mark their trail and to perish by massacre. ”

“ The attack on the European [136] colony, the blockade of the barracks, the destruction of the railway station, and the massacre of the missionaries and Christians, followed each other rapidly. Eye-witnesses have given us graphic descriptions of the atrocities committed during the insurrection. The bravery of the troops, the missionaries, the Christian women, and the children, has excited the admiration of the world. ”

“ There were twenty thousand French resident in the city, and they were declared to be engaged with the catholics to massacre the whole population during the confusion of the fire. The most terrible confusion and terror spread—some were labouring frantically to extinguish the flames, others were hurrying out their goods and conveying them away, others flung from the expected massacre, and others coming out armed to oppose the murderers. Not a foreigner or catholic could appear in the streets without danger of his life. ”

“ It was hard to believe that this well-built, bright, busy, windy 136city had, only eighteen months before, been the scene of a sanguinary riot, almost a massacre, in which many innocent coloured people lost their lives. ”

“ I recalled that such massacres, often on an infinitely larger scale, had happened a thousand times in history, and that still through them, often, indeed, by means of them, civilisation has marched forward, and mercy and peace have kissed each other over the bloody graves of the victims. ”

“ Our troops burn with a desire to meet the enemy. The massacre reported to have taken place in Paris does not discourage them; on the contrary, they are glad to know that suspected persons in the interior are got rid of. ”

“ The dead and wounded lay everywhere covered with terrible injuries, and the crying of the wounded, which might soften a stone, but not a soldier's heart, told of the awful pain which those "defenders of their country" had to suffer.
However, not all the soldiers approved of that senseless, that criminal murdering. Some of the "gentlemen" who had ordered us to massacre our French comrades were killed "by mistake" in the darkness of the night, by their own people, of course. ”

“ Eighteen or nineteen, all grown men excepting my murdered boy and another about the same age, were dead or dying; several more of the men were wounded, hiding away, whose groans through the night too well disclosed their hiding places, while the rest of the men had fled, at the moment of the massacre, to save their lives. ”

“ The blame, I say, is with them in the opening of the strife. But as it advanced, and in their dread consternation as it strengthened in extent and horror and success; as their frontiers were desolated, and fire, massacre, and torture came nearer and nearer to their centre, — the yell, the tomahawk, the scalping-knife, and the torch working up the nightmare of every man, woman, and child in their scattered settlements, — we can no longer interpose our scruples as to acts or apprehensions of the exasperated and almost desperate colonists. ”

“ Power fought desperately, each killing several of their assailants, but not one of the Europeans, men or women, survived this atrocious massacre. The bodies of some of them were afterwards found drifting down the Nile. ”

“ The savages, two thousand warriors in number, were enraged at the terms of capitulation, for they were induced to serve in this expedition by a promise of plunder. *** This was denied them, and they felt at liberty to throw off all restraint. As soon as the last man left the gate of the fort, they raised the hideous war-whoop, and fell upon the English with the fury of demons. The massacre was indiscriminate and terrible, and the French were idle spectators of the perfidy of their allies. ”

“ THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE.
The following letters were printed in the New York Tribune in the winter of 1879. They are of interest, not only as giving a minute account of one of the most atrocious massacres ever perpetrated, but also as showing the sense of justice which is to be found in the frontiersman's mind to-day. That men, exasperated by atrocities and outrages, should have avenged themselves with hot haste and cruelty was, perhaps, only human but that men should be found, fifteen years later, apologizing for, nay, justifying the cruel deed, is indeed a matter of marvel. ”