in,—the dreadful stroke and crash of their heavy sabres—the oaths and curses and cries of poor wounded fellows, trodden under foot> or crushed beneath the weight of dying horses, or within reach of their terrible heels as they furiously kick in their death agonies:—the roar of cannon,—the sharp crack of musketry,—the shouts of officers, ordering, calling, countermanding,—now urging on their men, the next moment falling from their horses as the death-shot reaches them—the hurrahs and shouts of temporary victors—the horrible silence again, save the earnest sound of the deathwork:—O, what a picture! O, what a scene! Is it not hell visible?
Yet how many such scenes has yonder sun witnessed! how many thousands of such scenes of slaughter do the pages of history record! And we sit quietly by our fire-sides, and read these descriptions, till our minds, become quite familiar—not indeed with the scenes as they really are, for that we could not bear—but with such general accounts of them as we find in books;—and we get at length to think that war is a very proper affair, and a matter of course. But could the peaceful reader look upon the scene and be in the midst of it, he would find it altogether a different thing from that which his imagination paints—nodding plumes, and martial music, and standards, and triumphs;—he would see it to be the horrid work of fellow-men hurting and killing each other.[1]
- ↑ "My heart is broken," writes Wellington, after the battle of Waterloo, "by the terrible loss I have sustained in my own friends and companions, and in my poor soldiers. Believe me,—nothing, except a battle lost, can be half so melancholy as a battle won."
