ATROCITIES CONNECTED WITH WAR. 



13 



Such are only a few insulated pictures of the 

 atrocities of war, and of the unnatural and infer 

 nal passions which uniformly follow in its train, 

 which may be considered as specimens of many 

 thousands of similar instances, which the records 

 of history furnish of the malignity and depravity 

 of mankind. I have selected my examples chief 

 ly from the history of ancient warfare : but were 

 we to search the annals of modern warfare, and 

 confine our attention solely to the battles of Alex 

 andria, of the Pyramids, of Borodina, of Smo- 

 lensko, of Austerlitz, of Leipsic, of Jena, of 

 Eylan, of Waterloo, and other warlike events 

 which have happened within the last thirty years, 

 we should meet with atrocities and scenes of 

 slaughter, no less horrible than those which I 

 have now related. I shall content myself with 

 stating only two or three instances. 



After the taking of Alexandria by Bona 

 parte, &quot; We were under the necessity,&quot; says 

 the relator, &quot; of putting the whole of them to 

 death at the breach. But the slaughter did not 

 cease with the resistance. The Turks and in 

 habitants fled to their mosques, seeking protec 

 tion from God and their prophet ; and then , men 

 and women, old and young, and infants at the 

 breast, were slaughtered. This butchery continu 

 ed for four hours ; after which the remaining part 

 of the inhabitants were much astonished at not 

 having their throats cut.&quot; Be it remembered 

 that all this bloodshed was premeditated. &quot; We 

 might have spared the men whom we lost,&quot; says 

 General Boyer, &quot; by only summoning the town ; 

 but it was necessary to begin by confounding our 

 enemy.&quot;* After the battle of the Pyramids, it 

 is remarked by an eye-wintess, that &quot; the whole 

 way through the desert, was tracked with the 

 bones and bodies of men and animals who had 

 perished in these dreadful wastes. In order 

 to warm themselves at night, they gathered to 

 gether the dry bones and bodies of the dead, 

 which the vultures had spared, and it was by a 

 fire composed of this fuel that Bonaparte lay 

 down to sleep in the desert.&quot;\ A more revolting 

 and infernal scene it is scarcely possible for the 

 imagination to depict. 



Miot gives the following description in rela 

 tion to a scene at Jaffa : &quot; The soldier aban 

 dons himself to all the fury which an assault 

 authorizes. He strikes, he slays, nothing can 

 impede him. All the horrors which accompany 

 the capture of a town by storm, are repeated in 

 every street, in every house. You hear the 

 cries of violated females calling in vain for help 

 to those relatives whom they are butchering. 

 No asylum is -espected. The blood streams on 

 every side ; at every step you meet with human 

 boings groaning and expiring,&quot; &c. Sir Robert 

 Wilson, when describing the campaigns in Po 

 land relates, that&quot; the ground between the wood. 



Miot s Memoirs. 



Ibid. 



and the Russian batteries, about a quarter of 

 mile, .was a sheet of naked human bodies, wnich 

 friends and foes had during the night mutuallt 

 stripped, not leaving the worst rag upon them. 

 although numbers of these bodies still retained 

 consciousness of their situation. It was a sight 

 which the eye loathed, but from which it could 

 not remove.&quot; In Labaume s &quot; Narrative of the 

 Campaign in Russia,&quot; we are presented with 

 the most horrible details of palaces, churches, 

 and streets, enveloped in flames, houses tum 

 bling into ruins, hundreds of blackened car 

 casses of the wretched inhabitants, whom the fire 

 had consumed, blended with the fragments, 

 hospitals containing 20,000 wounded Russians 

 on fire, and consuming the miserable victims, 

 numbers of half-burned wretches crawling among 

 the smoking ruins, females violated and mas 

 sacred, parents and children half naked, shiver 

 ing with cold, flying in consteration with the 

 wrecks of their half-consumed funiture, horses 

 falling in thousands, and writhing in the agonies 

 of death, the fragments of carriages, muskets, 

 helmets, breast-plates, portmanteaus, and gar 

 ments strewed in every direction, roads covered 

 for miles with thousands of the dying and the 

 dead heaped one upon another, and swimming 

 in blood, and these dreadful scenes rendered 

 still more horrific by the shrieks of young fe 

 males, of mothers and children, and the piercing 

 cries of the wounded and the dying, invoking 

 death to put an end to their agonies. 



But I will not dwell longer on such revolting 

 details. It is probable, that the feelings of some 

 of my readers have been harrowed up by the 

 descriptions already given, and that they have 

 turned away their eyes in disgust from such 

 spectacles of depravity and horror. Every mind 

 susceptible of virtuous emotions, and of the com 

 mon feelings of humanity, must, indeed, feel 

 pained and even agonized, when it reflects on 

 the depravity of mankind, and on the atrocious 

 crimes they are capable of committing, and have 

 actually perpetrated. A serious retrospect 01 

 the moral state of the world in past ages, is cal 

 culated to excite emotions, similar to those which 

 overpowered the mourning prophet when he ex 

 claimed, &quot; O that my h &amp;gt;ad were waters, and 

 mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep 

 day and night, for the slain of the daughters ol 

 my people !&quot; But, however painful the sight, 

 we ought not to turn away our eyes, with fasti 

 dious affectation, from the spectacles of misery 

 and devastation which the authentic records of 

 history present before us. They form traits in 

 the character of man, which ought to be contem 

 plated, they are/octein the history of mankind, 

 and not the. mere pictures of fancy which are ex 

 hibited in poetry, in novels, and romances, facts 

 which forcibly exemplify the operations of tho 

 malevolent principle, and from which we ought 

 to deduce important instructions, in reference 



