e caused the destruction of my whole army. I, therefore,
availing myself of the rights of war, which authorize the putting to death
prisoners taken under such circumstances, independent of the right given
to me by having taken the city by assault, and that of retaliation on the
Turks, ordered that the prisoners, who, in defiance of their capitulation,
had been found bearing arms against me, should be selected out and shot.
The rest, amounting to a considerable number, were spared. I would do the
same thing again to-morrow, and so would Wellington, or any general
commanding an army under similar circumstances." Whatever judgment
posterity may pronounce upon this transaction, no one can see in it any
indication of an innate love of cruelty in Napoleon. He regarded the
transaction as one of the stern necessities of war. The whole system is
one of unmitigated horror. Bomb-shells are thrown into cities to explode
in the chambers of maidens and in the cradles of infants, and the
incidental destruction of innocence and helplessness is disregarded. The
execrable ferocity of the details of war are essential to the system. To
say that Napoleon ought not to have shot these prisoners, is simply to say
that he ought to have relinquished the contest, to have surrendered
himself and his army to the tender mercies of the Turk; and to allow
England, and Austria, and Russia, to force back upon the disenthralled
French nation the detested reign of the Bourbons. England was bombarding
the cities of France, to compel a proud nation to re-enthrone a discarded
and hated king. The French, in self-defense, were endeavoring to repel
their powerful foe, by marching to India, England's only vulnerable point.
Surely, the responsibility of this war rests with the assailants, and not
with the assailed. There was a powerful party in the British Parliament
and throughout the nation, the friends of reform and of popular liberty,
who sympathized entirely with the French in this conflict, and who
earnestly protested against a war which they deemed impolitic and unjust.
But the king and the nobles prevailed, and as the French would not meekly
submit to their demands, the world was deluged with blood. "Nothing was
easier," says Alison, "than to have disarmed the captives and sent them
away." The remark is unworthy of the eloquent and distinguished historian.
It is simply affirming that France should have yielded the conflict, and
submitted to British dictation