ATROCITIES CONNECTED WITH WAR. 



129 



who were partakers of the same common nature, 

 as if they had been created merely for the work 

 of destruction ! Language is destitute of words 

 sufficiently strong to express the emotions of the 

 nind, when it seriously contemplates the horrible 

 scene. And how melancholy is it to reflect, that 

 in the present age, which boasts of its improve 

 ments in science, in civilization, and in religion, 

 neither reason, nor benevolence, nor humanity, 

 nor Christianity, has yet availed to arrest the 

 progress of destroying armies, and to set a mark 

 of ignominy on &quot;the people who delight in 

 war !&quot; 



ATROCITIES CONNECTED WITH WAR. 



However numerous may have been the victims 

 tiathave been sacrificed in war, it is not so much 

 the mere extinction of human life that renders the 

 scene of warfare so horrible, as the cruelties with 

 which it has always been accompanied, and the 

 infernal passions which it has engendered and car 

 ried into operation. It extirpates every princi 

 ple of compassion, humanity, and justice; it 

 blunts the feelings, and hardens the heart ; it in 

 vents instruments of torture, and perpetrates, 

 without a blush, cruelties revolting to every prin 

 ciple of virtue and benevolence. 



When Jerusalem was taken by Antiochus 

 Epiphanes, in the year 168, B. C. he gave orders 

 to one division of his army to cut in pieces all 

 who were found in the temple and synagogues ; 

 while another party, going through the streets of 

 the city, massacred all that came in their way. 

 He next ordered the city to be plundered and set 

 on fire ; pulled down all their stately buildings, 

 caused the walls to be demolished, and carried 

 away captive ten thousand of those who had es 

 caped the slaughter. He set up the statue of Ju 

 piter Olympus on the altar of burnt-offerings, and 

 all who refused to come and worship this idol 

 were either massacred, or put to some cruel tor 

 tures, till they either complied or expired under 

 the hands of the executioners. In the war which 

 the Carthaginians waged with the Mercenaries, 

 Hamilcar, the Carthaginian general, threw all 

 the prisoners that fell into his hands to be devour 

 ed by wild beasts. Asdrubal, another Cartha 

 ginian general, when engaged in war against the 

 Romans, in revenge for a defeat he had sustain 

 ed, brought all the Roman prisoners he had taken 

 during two years, upon the walls, in the sight of 

 the whole Roman army. There he put them to 

 the most exquisite tortures, putting out their eyes, 

 cutting off&quot; their noses, ears, and fingers, legs and 

 arms, tearing their skin to pieces with iron rakes 

 or harrows ; and then threw them headlong from 

 the top of the battlements.* He was of a temper 

 remarkably inhuman, and it is said that he even 

 jook pleasure in seeing some of these unhappy 

 !nen flayed alive. In the year 1201, when Jeng- 



Rollin s Ancient History, Vol. I 

 29 



hiz-Khan had reduced the rebels whc ftad seized 

 upon his paternal possessions, as a specimen of 

 his lenity, he caused seventy of their chiefs to be 

 thrown into as many cauldrons of boiling water. 

 The plan on which this tyrant conducted his ex 

 peditions, as already stated, was that of total ex 

 termination. For some time he utterly extirpated 

 the inhabitants of those places which he conquer 

 ed, designing to people them anew with his Mo 

 guls ; and, in consequence of this resolution, he 

 would employ his army in beheading 100,000 pri 

 soners at once. Tamerlane, one of his success 

 ors, who followed in his footsteps, is said to have 

 been more humane than this cruel despot. Histo 

 rians inform us that &quot; his sportive cruelty seldom 

 went farther than the pounding of three or four 

 thousand people in large mortars, or building 

 them among bricks and mortar into a wall.&quot; If 

 such be the &quot; tender mercies of the wicked,&quot; 

 how dreadful beyond description must their cruel 

 ties be ! 



We are accustomed to hear Alexander the 

 Great eulogized as a virtuous and magnanimous 

 hero ; and even the celebrated Montesquieu, in 

 his &quot; Spirit of Laws,&quot; has written a panegyric 

 on his character. Yet we find him guilty of the 

 most abominable vices, and perpetrating the most 

 atrocious crimes. At the instigation of the 

 strumpet Thais, during a drunken banquet, he 

 set on fire the beautiful city of Persepolis, and 

 consumed it to ashes. Clitus, one of his cap 

 tains, and brother of Helenice who had nursed 

 Alexander, and saved his life at the battle of the 

 Granicus, at the imminent danger of his own. 

 Yet this man, to whom he was so highly indebt 

 ed, he thrust through with a javelin, at an enter 

 tainment to which he had invited him ; on ac 

 count of his uttering some strong expressions, 

 which were intended to moderate Alexander s 

 vanity. His treatment of the Branchidae fur 

 nishes an example of the most brutal and frantic 

 cruelty which history records. These people 

 received Alexander, while pursuing his con 

 quests, with the highest demonstrations of joy, 

 and surrendered to him, both themselves and 

 their city. The next day, he commanded his 

 phalanx to surround the city, and, a signal being 

 given, they were ordered to plunder it, and to 

 put every one of its inhabitants to the sword, 

 which inhuman order was executed with the 

 same barbarity with which it had been given. 

 All the citizens, at the very time they were go 

 ing to pay homage to Alexander, were murdered 

 in the streets and in their houses ; no manner of 

 regard being had to their cries and tears, nor the 

 least distinction made of age or sex. They 

 even pulled up the very foundations of the walls, in 

 order that not the least traces of that city might 

 remain. And why were these ill-fated citizens 

 punished in so summary and inhuman a man 

 ner ? Merely because their forefathers, up 

 wards of one hundred and fifty years before, ha&amp;lt;? 



