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Nevertheless, not only did Marcellus stain his military honour by permitting a general pillage of the wealthy mercantile city, in the course of which Archimedes and many other citizens were put to death, but the Roman senate lent a deaf ear to the complaints which the Syracusans afterwards presented regarding the celebrated general, and neither returned to individuals their pillaged property nor restored to the city its freedom.
Suddenly a fleet of these same pirates, sent out, unassisted by their sovereign, by the private impulse of a few individuals, had insulted the sacred soil of Spain herself, sailed into Vigo, pillaged the churches, taken anything that they required, and had gone away unmolested.
There was a special stipulation that they should be protected from the Indians, of whom they stood in the greatest terror, lest the massacre of Fort William Henry should be avenged upon them. Johnson restrained his dangerous allies, and, though the fort was pillaged, no blood was shed. The capture of Niagara was an important stroke.
Troops very ill disciplined spread their devastation over all the neighbouring country. They spared only the dwelling of Abosaber and six persons of his household; but they pillaged his granaries and his standing corn, with those of all the inhabitants. The wife of Abosaber bewailed this disaster.
This universal approbation of the part played by Lord Hardwicke was of course perfectly well known to the Government; it was also more or less known to the public from the letters written by the Times correspondent at Genoa. 'But for the decision and judgment Lord Hardwicke manifested, he wrote, 'Genoa would, in all probability, have been at this moment a ruined and pillaged city.
The chief who had many oxen must slaughter them, and throw the bodies to the wild beasts. The clansman who had a little store of corn must straight way destroy it. Even the kraals, which gave shelter from the elements, were to be burned down, as if an enemy were being pillaged. Otherwise the new heaven would not appear; while the starry heaven above, would fall and destroy the disobedient.
The scenes that followed were of the usual character; the whole island was laid waste, the churches pillaged, the people abused and enslaved. Twelve hundred men, women, and children were brought back to Algiers, with much firing of guns, and other signals of joy, in which the whole city joined.
On the 28th the Emperor visited the battlefield, which presented a frightful spectacle, and gave orders that everything possible should be done to alleviate the sufferings of the wounded, and also of the inhabitants and peasants who had been ravaged and pillaged, and their fields and houses burned, and then ascended the heights from which he could follow the course of the enemy's retreat.
It would also be interesting to survey the old capital of the world in the hands of her various masters, pillaged and sacked by all in turn; but her doom was sealed when Alaric entered the gates which had been closed for six hundred years to a foreign enemy, and the empire fell, virtually, when the haughty city, so long a queen among the nations, yielded up her palaces as spoil.
Just as, under the old law of England, the rebel was executed with circumstances of special atrocity, so at the present time, under the name of crushing rebellion, men are tortured and flogged, no quarter is given, they are executed without trial, their private property is pillaged, their towns and villages are destroyed, their women violated, their children killed, penalties are imposed on districts owing to acts for which the population is not collectively responsible and nothing said.
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