Seigniorage

“ To seize such a man, like a common criminal, in the midst of the guards by whom he was surrounded, and in a city apparently devoted to him; to convert the object of this deep and habitual veneration into a subject of compassion, or of contempt, was a commission calculated to make even the boldest hesitate. ”

“ Sometimes during war the seignior's wife and daughters were reduced to plowing in the fields and laboring with the women servants at the harvest; but ordinarily the life at the seigniory was a life of petty grandeur, with such style as the backwoods afforded. ”

“ But it was Sheila who guided their steps at the bottom. She [Pg 301] led the way toward the German and the thing he had been asked to watch. Terror shook her. It seemed as if she could never look at what she knew would be waiting for her, and yet no power on earth could have held her back.
As she reached the prisoner she saw in bewilderment a strange scattering of things on the floor about him—forceps, some knives, a roll of gauze, and a syringe. There was an odor of a strange antiseptic which made her faint. She tottered and would have fallen had the German not helped the chief to steady her. ”

“ The above quantities of articles, large as they appear, would not have sufficed to supply our wants for the long siege. The military authorities therefore very wisely determined at a very early date to make use of the Requisition. This power of seizing at a certain price from their owners all articles required by the troops has to be used very carefully and tactfully, as otherwise the people hide or bury their goods. ”

“ People accordingly lived, or rather began to live once more, under the rude, iron-gloved hand which used them roughly, but which afforded them protection. The seignior, sovereign and proprietor, maintains for himself under this double title, the moors, the river, the forest, all the game. It is no great evil, since the country is nearly a desert, and he devotes his leisure to exterminating large wild beasts. He alone possessed the resources. He is the only one that is able to construct the mill, the oven, and the winepress ”

“ But take care what you do; for I cannot but think that it is rash to make the attempt. The King's orders are most strict, that no one, not his nearest friends, not his own father, should have a moment's interview with him."
"I will see him, nevertheless, if it be possible," answered Seymour. "The man who could refuse consolation, however small, to a poor captive shut out from human intercourse, must have a cold heart indeed, let the risk be what it may. I am sure you do not regret your captivity for such a cause, Sir Robert?"
"I regret my captivity, whatever be the reason," replied the Knight ”

“ Unless we deliver to him the precious person of our noble Prince, the whole city will be delivered over to the brutal soldiery, who will pillage our houses, desecrate our churches, murder and outrage our wives, our mothers and our children--just as they did in Mons, in Valenciennes and in Mechlin. Seigniors, we are men--all of us here--and at thought of what awaits us and our fellow-citizens our very heart blood seems to freeze with horror. It is of our women that we must think and of our children! ”

“ Though in a short memoir which he composed of his own life, he had the effrontery to write, "I have punished Sejanus, because I found him bent upon the destruction of the children of my son Germanicus," one of these he put to death, when he began to suspect Sejanus; and another, after he was taken off. It would be tedious to relate all the numerous instances of his cruelty: suffice it to give a few examples, in their different kinds. Not a day passed without the punishment of some person or other, not excepting holidays, or those appropriated to the worship of the gods. ”

“ In one of the city dwellings two low-caste men, a syce and his brother, argued through the drowsy noon. Family debt, family affection cried ‘Stay,’ and so the charger was led to the door by an orderly who, saluting, announced ‘The syce has run away, what can be done? Nothing can be done. He has entirely departed, the son of Satan.’
The General and his Staff rode through the troops and took up a position beyond the Ghat. The band of a Sikh regiment sent its music rolling out over the river and the dunes. ”

“ The seigniors possessed no right of uniform justice. In France, a superior, a middle, and an inferior judicial court were recognised. The first alone possessed the power of life and death. The more considerable fiefs had usually attached to them the right to exercise the highest justice, but there were exceptions to this rule. A vavasseur, for instance, might sometimes appeal against this highest justice, while a seignior, who was only entitled to exercise the inferior justiciary rights, might inflict death on all robbers caught in flagrante delicto on his lands. ”

“ Secession as a cause is past the range of possibilities. But no people in their subjugation wear a better front than these brave old spirits, whose lives are not their own. Fire has ravaged their beautiful city, soldiers of the color of their servants, guard the crossings and pace the pavement with bayoneted muskets. ”

“ Every inducement is held out to encourage secession from the agencies, and strengthen the forces of the hostile camp. It is not surprising that, in view of the non-arrival of supplies, and the recent order of the War Department to arrest parties leaving and arriving, that people less credulous than Indians would feel undecided and uneasy. * * * It must be remembered that the whole Sioux nation is related, and that there is hardly a man, woman, or child in the hostile camp who has not blood relations at one or the other of the agencies. ”

“ In one of his journeys, his litter being obstructed by some bushes, he ordered the officer whose duty it was to ride on and examine the road, a centurion of the first cohorts, to be laid on his face upon the ground, and scourged almost to death.
LXI. Soon afterwards, he abandoned himself to every species of cruelty, never wanting occasions of one kind or another, to serve as a pretext. He first fell upon the friends and acquaintance of his mother, then those of his grandsons, and his daughter-in-law, and lastly those of Sejanus; after whose death he became cruel in the extreme. ”

“ Greenway Court has withstood one siege, and can withstand another. There is a spring directly under the house, and, having some knowledge of mechanics, I have concealed the source, which is at a distance from the house, and we get the spring-water by merely going down into the cellar. Then I keep constantly on hand, in this same cellar, stores of provisions and ammunition, so we are well able to defend ourselves, even against burning—for the Indians have found out the use of the torch against white men’s dwellings. ”

“ In one place some friars were hanging, impaled by the throat upon the sharpened branches of a tree. Everywhere peasants were found in the most miserable condition; poor wretches who had fallen into the hands of the French, and been tortured to make them discover where supplies were hid, or made to serve as guides, and when their knowledge of the way ended, shot, that they might give no information to the pursuers. The indignation of our army was what it ought to be; men and officers alike exclaimed against the atrocious conduct of their detestable enemies. ”

“ Men capable of doing all that the Secession leaders were guilty of—both before and during the war—were quite capable of revengefully destroying twenty-five thousand of their enemies by the most hideous means at their command. ”

“ No man can blame me for my excitement or even my terror, for the Sheik had written, “You are in danger! Withdraw before it is too late, and never see the old man or child of his again!”
Had the time been the Middle Ages, or the place a strange quarter of the Orient, I might not have been so shocked at the knowledge which a tawdry machine, or the mountebank behind it, seemed to have of the affairs of persons against whom no charge of contact with the lower strata of life could be brought. But in our civilization, where nothing but the commonplace is to be expected, I was wholly unnerved. ”

“ These were the instructions of General Bill to his army, to be faithfully carried out during the siege:—
1. That the King was not to be allowed out of his tent on any account, in spite of his impatience.
2. That, with the exception of the general and the scout, no warrior was allowed, without his officers permission, to leave his post, day or night, during the siege, and if any one were discovered sleeping without one eye open, his allowance of sugar for porridge next morning was to be stopped.
3. That the scout was to be continually on the move. ”

“ None were scalped, but most of them were otherwise horribly mutilated, which fiendish work is usually done by the squaws. All had been stripped of their clothing, but their comrades in the escort were able to identify the bodies, which being done, we gave them decent burial. Their fate was one that has overtaken many of our gallant army in their efforts to protect the frontiersmen's homes and families from savages who give no quarter, though they have often received it, and where the possibility of defeat in action carries with it the certainty of death and often of preceding torture. ”

“ But when the quitting-time came, when war was over, what was going to happen then? Sheila wondered it about the boys who lay unconscious on their stretchers, packed in the room about her. She wondered it about the boys conscious in their cots below. Most of all she wondered it about Ward 7-A. It was going to hurt so [Pg 238] many to have to look beyond the immediate day into a procession of numberless days stretching into years and years. The sudden relaxing from big efforts to little ones, that would hurt, too, like the uncramping of over-strained muscles. ”

“ President Lincoln thereupon issued a call for [Pg 20] seventy-five thousand men to uphold and vindicate the authority of the Government, and to prove, if possible, that secession was not only a heresy in doctrine, but an impracticability in the American Republic. The response to this call was much more general than the most sanguine had any reason to look for. The enthusiasm of the people was quite unbounded. Individuals encouraged individuals; families aroused families; communities vied with communities, and States strove with States. ”

“ It was the most appalling din—rifles firing, mirrors and glasses smashing, and wood-work splintering all round us. Our men wouldn't face the stairs.
'There's a back staircase,' I heard Seymour yell, and I went after him. We clattered up and burst on those chaps from the rear. There was a scuffle, Seymour shouted down for our people to stop firing, and in five minutes there wasn't a living regular in the house. Most of them had escaped by sliding down from the verandah, and had run back into the forest again, shooting at any one who went near a window. ”

“ In 1780, at Choisy, a table for thirty persons is spread every day for the king, another with thirty places for the seigniors, another with forty places for the officers of the guard and the equerries, and one with fifty for the officers of the bedchamber. According to my estimate, the king, on getting up and on retiring, on his walks, on his hunts, at play, has always around him at least forty or fifty seigniors and generally a hundred, with as many ladies, besides his attendants on duty. ”

“ I have seen it done a dozen times at least.--Why not, habited as a carter, follow some empty waggon that has brought billets or merchandize into the fortress?"
"The plan is not a bad one, in truth," said Seymour; "perhaps, if driven to it, I may execute it."
"Driven to it!" exclaimed Sir Thomas Overbury. "Is not every man, who is detained a captive here unjustly, driven to take measures for his own deliverance? Or do you expect that the King will be mollified, and give his kind consent to your re-union with your fair wife? ”

“ Of all the phenomena of feudalism none seems more essential than seignorial justice. In times gone by English lawyers and historians have been apt to treat it lightly and to concentrate their attention on military tenure. For them ‘the introduction of the military tenures’ has been ‘the establishment of the feudal system.’ But when compared with seignorial justice, military tenure is a superficial matter, one out of many effects rather than a deep-seated cause. ”

“ His imperious, as well as vigorous, manner cowed the old woman, and she shuffled away into the gloom of the interior, grumbling and muttering her suspicions. For the few moments which intervened Sejanus paced the obscure passage, inhaling the odours of the kitchen, to the disgust of his refined senses, and listening to the distant bursts of chatter and laughter, of what seemed to be female voices. A man made his appearance at length, and greeted him with deference. ”

“ Seicheprey! I found a French gas-mask out from Seicheprey. It has sacred ground upon it, the soil of France. And where the face of its wearer pressed into it there are blood-spots. During the raid on the first of March our allies came down from the right, and dropped in behind our lines at a distance of five hundred yards. There in the open they lay, a reserve against a possible breaking through of the enemy. The enemy did not break through ”

“ Men, women, and children, of all classes, are seized, and made to carry the baggage, arms, accoutrements, and cages of pet birds, belonging to the officers and sipahees of these corps. They are stripped of their clothes, confined, and starved from the time they are seized; and as it is difficult to catch people to relieve them along the road, they are commonly taken on two or three stages. If they run away, they forfeit all their clothes which remain in the hands of the sipahees; and a great many die along the road of fatigue, hunger, and exposure to the sun. ”