Pogrom

“ 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. ”

“ You're not hard to please. There is famine. Imminent massacre. Your people are about to be destroyed. And you, what are you going to do? You will have to march against those you love, or else be killed with your friends. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The features of the men and women who composed this mob, rendered savage by want, suffering, and oppression, were distorted by hate, the desire for vengeance and lust for destruction, while they were lit up by the huge fierce flames which issued from the rapidly perishing but once magnificent building. ”

“ It must be a startling story—a story of greed fattening upon the hunger of children, of the trampling of inalienable rights, of the kicking to death of unborn babes by brutes untouched by the law, of the murder of women, and the shooting of unarmed men in the night—a story of tyranny and brutality as infamous and cruel as was ever born of the dynasty of the Romanoffs. ”

“ But I certainly would say—as indeed the peasant says in every land—"Let those who begin the quarrel do the fighting"; and let those who have to do the fighting and bear the brunt of it (including the women) decide whether there shall be fighting or not. To leave the dread arbitrament of War in the hands of private groups and cliques who, for their own ends and interests, are willing to see the widespread slaughter of their fellow-countrymen and the ruin of innumerable homes is hateful beyond words. ”

“ In a day, in an hour, a cycle of civilization is canceled. What you saw in the morning was suave and ordered life; and the sun sets on howling savagery. In the morning black-coated men lifted their hats to women. Ere nightfall they are slashing them with sabres and burning the houses over their heads. And the grave old professors who were droning platitudes of peace and progress and humanitarianism are screaming, ere today is done, shrill senile clamors for blood and ravage and rapine.
A reversal to barbarism. ”

“ Ay, we will bequeath to you three things: famine and pestilence and civil war, which shall rage among you and destroy you till ye are no more a people. Ye have suffered our servants to be murdered, and disobeyed our commands, and it is for this reason, as I have told you, that the sun shines no more and the summer will not come. Complete your wickedness if ye will, and let the gods follow by the path that their servants trod. ”

“ In reading this history the mind becomes so accustomed to the devastation of provinces, the murder of peasants, and horrible outrages on all the decencies and sanctities of life,—that fire, famine and slaughter become mere commonplaces and matters of course. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A rude mob, consisting of the very dregs of the populace, made brutal by harsh treatment, by sanguinary decrees which dogged them in every town, scared from place to place and driven almost to despair, were compelled to worship their God, and to hide like a work of darkness the universal, sacred privilege of humanity. ”

“ Wholesale massacres and torturings, wholesale starvation of prisoners, firing of great cities, piracies of the cruelest kind, persecution of the most hideous character and of vast extent, and finally assassination in high places—whatever is inhuman, whatever is brutal, whatever is fiendish, these men have resorted to. They will leave behind names so black, and the memory of deeds so infamous, that the execration of the slaveholders' rebellion will be eternal. ”

“ You will feel it in that sad, haughty anger which will drive the blood to your brow when you hear insults to your country from the mouth of a stranger. You will feel it in more proud and vigorous measure on the day when the menace of a hostile race shall call forth a tempest of fire upon your country, and when you shall behold arms raging on every side, youths thronging in legions, fathers kissing their children and saying, “Courage!” ”

“ The first dreadful act of this fearful drama passed like a dream to those who, at a distance from Paris, only read of the atrocities of that wretched capital; but when the wave rolled nearer; when crowds of armed men, wild and savage in look, with ragged uniforms and bloodstained hands, prowled about the villages where in happier times a soldier had never been seen; when the mob around the guillotine supplied the place of the gathering at the market ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ When he is ordered to fire down a crowded thoroughfare where poor non-combatants and emaciated victims of military rule are clamoring for bread, he instantly obeys and sees the wrinkles of old age filled with gore, and the gray hair of fathers and mothers stained with red blood, and streams of life blood gushing from the mangled breasts of helpless women, feeling neither pity nor compunction of conscience. ”

“ The country for miles round was alive with fugitives and their pursuers. Women, children, and old men, as well as soldiers, joined in that panic flight; and shrieks, and shouts, and groans told only too plainly of the slaughter and terror of the pursuit. To slaughter the victors added robbery and outrage. Far and wide they scoured the country in quest of victims and booty; houses were burned, villages were desolated, fields were laid bare, nor till night mercifully fell over the land did that scene of terror end. War is indeed a terrible scourge, and civil war the most terrible of all. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Religion spreads abroad its thousands of arms, each one asserting its sole right to be, but the fact remains: war is spreading, crime increasing, immorality assuming giant proportions, misery, disease, and wrongdoing growing mightier day by day, while the forces that could and would stay these horrors, still wear the badge of slavery. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No imagination can conceive the uproar and din of such an assault upon a populous city—a horrid mingling of the vociferated commands of the officers, and the shouts of the advancing and victorious enemy, with the screams of terror from affrighted women and children, and the dreadful groans and imprecations from men dying maddened with unsatisfied revenge, and biting the dust in agony of despair. ”

“ We see the midnight massacre, and hear the war-cries of the allies of England. We see the flames climb around the happy homes, and in the charred and blackened ruins the mutilated bodies of wives and children. ”

“ You resemble a fury of hell, blind, devastating, and bloody. Amid the horrors of civil war, amid lakes of blood and mountains of dead bodies. you always present yourself like a spectre, inciting all to devastation, slaughter, and revenge ”

“ 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. ”

“ This is the age of the war of the oppressed against the oppressors, and every one of those ringleaders of the privileged gangs of murderers and swindlers, called Sovereigns, look to each other for aid against the common enemy, and suspend their mutual jealousies in the presence of a mightier fear. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If thou comest then will there be war between thy town and ours, and we will burn the houses and harry and slay thee and the seven other white men, and all men of thy town who side with thee, and make slaves of the women and children. ”

“ The anarchy and confusion of the second epoch—the fear and horror that prevail when the voices and motions of a sanguinary mob are heard in the streets, and the terrified inmates of the houses are seen crouching in speechless terror, are displayed with wonderful truth. ”

“ You who are closed in here know not what is passing in the whole country, what oppression has come, what deeds of violence are done,—murdering of priests, profanation of sanctuaries, contempt of all law. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the midst of our civilization, down in our slums and labor-ghettos, we had bred a race of barbarians, of savages; and now, in the time of our calamity, they turned upon us like the wild beasts they were and destroyed us. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Peril and resistance exasperate his anger. He catches the fever from contact with those who are fevered, and follows robbers who have become his comrades.1301 Add to this the clamors, the drunkenness, the spectacle of destruction, the nervous tremor of the body strained beyond its powers of endurance, and we can comprehend how, from the peasant, the laborer, and the bourgeois, pacified and tamed by an old civilization, we see all of a sudden spring forth the barbarian. ”

“ The whole country is being pillaged. Escaped convicts, straggling Russian prisoners, degraded soldiers, murderers are plundering country houses, farms, whole villages, and inciting the mob to violence. ”

“ Our comrades had been slaughtered in a most inhuman and brutal manner, and slaves were trampling over their mangled and bleeding corpses. Revenge must have fired every heart, and strung every arm with nerves of steel, for the herculean task of blood. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On that terrible night, during which the horrors of civil war were added to those of incendiarism, while so many men animated by the spirit of vengeance and the hope of pillage rushed upon one another, a little band of kind-hearted folk, moved by so much suffering, patrolled the streets, bearing relief to the victims. ”