The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1870-10-07
DAILY PRESS.
Friday Morning, October 7, 1870.
Rarbariiies of w..
PORTLAND

EuSiish and French papers have nublisbod
| horrible stories recently of the suffar;nns ~
Asace and Lorraine, and the brutal exnsssoa s -,
OF German sOl1ers in their treatment hot,'
| OF prisoners OF war and inoffensive inhahi.
tants. We fear there is some truth in these
stories, for war is dreadful business which
blunts the finer sensibilities, and not only
leaves its track of blood and desolation but
develops all the latent cruelty and animal
passions of the human heart. The dreadful
affair of Bazeilles has been told by many in
dependent witnesses, the latest of whom, the
Due de Fitz-James, writes to the London
Times
On the morning of the 3lst of August the
courageous inhabitants of that village per-
celving that the enemy was coming OF, donned
thelr National Guards uniforms and aided the
army IN holding in check Bavarian corps
and division (Sh0ler's) of the Fourth Prus-
sian Reserve Corps. The French army was
driven back. The enemy entered Bazeilles
and then commenced a scene of horror and
naneiess excesses that must forever disgrace
tnelr perpetrators. In order to punish the in
habltants of the village for presumine to de-
lend themselves, they set the place on fire.
Most of the National Guards had been killed.
The population sought refuge in the cellars.
All-women and chldren-were buried aliyei
Gut OF 1000 Inhabitants, barely 800 survive to
relate how the Bavarans drove the women
and children back into the flames, and shot
those who succeeded in escaping / myself
saw the ruins of the villsge There ia NOT a
house left standing. A fearful smell of charred
hsh pervades the air, ard 1 saw the calcned
BODIES OF the inhabitants on the thresholds of
their own dwellings.
The Due de Ftz-James is Frenchmap.
but English accounts cOrrobOrate his state
ments in the main, although there is a dis
crepancy i'll the French and German cxplana-
ton OF the reason why the village was fired,
and we are left good ground to hope that it
Was sad military necessity, not an act of
wanton cruelty. When the Prussians first
entered France it seems TO be admitted that
they behaved remarkably well; now we have
complaints of their terrible exactions and de-
vastatlons, and reports OIL feeling of mutu-
al evaporation which often breaks out in
wild excesses tand murders. French prison.
ers, 1t is SAID, are brought into German hospi.
tails disabled by blows from the muskets of
their guards; and all France and all the sym
pathlzers with her cause call upon us to ex-
ecrate the barbarous nation which so dis
sraces the profession of arms.
Very few OF the OffeDses we have cited have
been proved; but if they are all brought home
to King Williams armies it will not follow
that the Germans are more brutal than other
civilized people, or make war with any more
superf1uous outrage than the French, or the
English, or the Spaniards, or even the people
" INC Cniteu 0tates' All history Is Iuli Oh
instances OF tne violation OF the ethics OF war
by cultivated and Christian people. When,
in modern times, have prisoners ever been
more cruelty tortured by civilized enemy
than our soldiers at Andersonville? Is there
any gaoler worse than Capt. Wirtz among the
German armies? Is there no complaint, well
OF lll-lounded, OF lhe treatment OF Confederate
prisoners in our own hands during the war?
The British prison-ship in New York Harbor
Ir,o IL LII
during the revolution was the scene OF hor-
roIs lar exceeding those which the French
captives told after Sedan. The patriots of
CUBA have not only been cruelty outraged by
their Spanish cOnquerors, but actually butch
cred after surrender. During the Peninsular
War, at the beginning Of this century, both
French, and Spanish and English soldiers
were guilty of extraordinary inhumanity. In
the present war the French have been brutal
in carrying out the order for expelling German
residents from Paris, and if they have COM
mitted no excesses in the field we must re-
member they have never been off their own,
territory. If they had crossed into Germany
the same stories would probably have been
told about them which are now told about the
Prussians.
The massacre of BazeilleS has parallels in
almost every modern War.-nav. accent the
worst possible account of if. and that can
easily be matched in the history of French or
armies. When S0nlf gfnrmp6 (DnOrtn
in ,SO9. bellish massacre of non-combatants
followed rape. pillaoe. and murder were nm
restrained the river was literally cboked with
the dead and 1OOOO of tba Portuonase in
Guiding women and children. nerished in va
rious ways. When WelIinpton assanlted
Cindad Rodrioo' in 1919 still worse scenes
were enacted and the British fired The town
in three or four nIaces. and tried to blow nm
the great mspazine-a crime ali the more
When the same commander stormed Badaios
soon afterward, the sack of the city. with ali
the nameless accompaniments of murder and
violence. lasted too daus and t,po nights
When he took St. Sebastian in 1919 the ont-
RACES of his troops almost exceeded belef
The wretcbed inhabitants. driven from their
burning houses and huddled into one Quarter
of the CITY, were subjected to every horror
which diabolical lust and rage could insnire.
Girls and women were violated in the SIGHT of
their parents and their husbands. Every
habitation was pillaged, The streets ran with
wine and blood, and resounded for two or
three days with the shrieks of the tortured.
On the morning of the assault st. Sebastian
contained over six hundred bouses. at the end
of three days there remained onlv 66 In this
case also it must be remembered that the in
habitants who suffered were not only non
combatants but the friends and allies of the
British. Wellington was just man but in
the excitement OF victory the brutal instincts
of the soldiers got the mastery, and there was
no controlling them. Augereau made him
self Infamous by his cruelties to the peasants
OF Catalonia in 1910. The annals of the Brit
ish wars in India are stained with atrocities.
During the British American war of 1872 Ad-
mlral Cochrane received Imperative orders
Hy 1ay VASE AZ, owls anu uistricts ol tre Onitea