Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/343

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BETWEEN THE CZAR AND THE SULTAN. 301 tender man, and caused him to burst into sobs as chap. though he were a little child. 1__ Before the morning of the 5th the armed insur- rection had ceased. From the first, it had been feeble. On the other hand, the moral resistance which was opposed to the acts of the President and his associates had been growing in strength : and when the massacre began on the afternoon of the 4th of December, the power of this moral resistance was in the highest degree formidable. Yet it came to pass that, by reason of the strange prostration of mind which was wrought by the massacre, the armed insurrection dragged down with it in its fall the whole policy of those who conceived that by the mere force of opinion and ridicule they would be enabled to send the plot- ters to Vincennes. The Cause of those who in- tended to rely upon this scheme of moral resist- ance was in no way mixed up with the attempts of the men of the barricades, but still it was a Cause which depended upon the high spirit of the people; and it had happened that this spirit — perplexed and baffled on the 2d of December by a stratagem and a night attack — was now crushed out by sheer horror. For her beauty, for her grandeur, for her his- toric fame, for her warlike deeds, for her power to lead the will of a mighty nation, and to crown or discrown its monarchs, no city on earth is worthy to be the rival of Paris. Yet, because of the palsy that came upon her after the slaughter on the Boulevard, this Paris — this beauteous, heroic Paris