No! while such ghosts as murdered Poland moves, And flits, like Banquo's line o'er polished steelOr stalks at midnight down Ukrainian groves, And, mournful, stands, upbraiding, 'twixt their peasant loves. XIV. Shall Scythian hordes usurp the right to slay, Nor bear the mark, the Heaven-doomed curse of Cain? 1 When goaded Freedom shall assert Her reign, And dash to atoms Sibir's icy chain? Though long delayed, the doom must come at last, Blew back the Moslem wave,-while Europe stood aghast. 66 to remain." This would surely please the Lord God of Israel! and is even worse than the blasphemous American scoundrel. 2 Sam. ii. makes murder a perfect jest, for we are wittily told that Abner said to Joab, Let the young men arise and play (read murder) before us. And Joab said, Let them arise; and they caught every man his fellow by the head, and thrust his sword in his fellow's side; so they fell down together, and there was a very sore battle that day." And as Jesus also is reputed to have said, He "came not to send peace, but a sword," upon the earth, when such a sacred volume as the Holy Bible inculcates the principles of war, it is useless to speak of beating swords into ploughshares, and spears into pruning-hooks just yet. No marvel then I see in to-day's paper that the German Landsturm Bill has passed the third reading; its effect will be to place Germany in the position of a vast armed camp; it will place 2,000,000 more men at her disposal. With the existing army and reserve, it will raise the military force of the Empire to 2,800,000 men; not mere numbers on paper, but a thoroughly equipped fighting machine. All able-bodied men between 17 and 42 years of age, not in the army or reserve, are liable to be called upon for the Landsturm; and these may be called out to fill the gaps in the Landwehr, and, should occasion arise, be compelled to serve in or out of the country, as the Emperor may determine. France, also, has copied the Prussian system. She has already an army of 1,000,000, which can be increased by 600,000 "Territorial Reserve.' Russia too has an active army of 1,400,000, which, by the new regulations, can be supported ten years hence by a reserve of 2,000,000. The lesser continental nations are also increasing their armaments, and everywhere the aim seems to be the possession of the best possible fighting machine, or Christ's "sword" of murder. But man is destined to have yet a nobler aim, even on this earth, in spite of Papal infallibility, and all such presumptuous, intolerant, and intolerable creeds. And as for poor Poland, the latest piece of cruelty in 1865 is, that the Almanac hitherto published in the Polish language, containing dates and fête. days has now been prohibited by General Mouravieff, and replaced by one in Russian. 1 "The Lord delivered the Canaanites into their hand, but Adoni-bezek fled. They pursued and caught him, and cut off his thumbs and his great toes. And he said, Threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table; as have done so God hath requited me.' -Judges i. What a number of thumbless kings below his table! " 2 John Sobieski, King of Poland, was born in 1629, and died 1696. In 1683, XV. How long, just 1 Heaven! how long must Vengeance sleep? Growls o'er, and, mangling, heaves to each their dripping share!3 XVI. Inscrutable, O Fate! to man, thy ways, Else, knout-drilled serfs, with savage-brained Caziques, 4 The "Sword," while pious Murder-glutted-wreaks with a Polish army, he rescued Vienna from the Turks, which was besieged by them with an army 200,000 strong. The Emperor Leopold was compelled to flee from his capital, and the city was on the point of falling into their hands, but Sobieski drove them in terror from their camp, and saved Europe and Christendom from the further irruptions of the Ottoman power. He was one of the greatest warriors of his time. Poland has received a poor return from her three crowned murderers of the present day. 1 Habakkuk seems to doubt the mere personality of God, when he wrote, "Art Thou not from everlasting, O Lord, my God, mine Holy One? and art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look upon iniquity. Wherefore lookest Thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest Thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous than he?" 2 Regarding the House of Hapsburg, Shakspere truly writes,-"O Austria, thou slave, thou wretch, thou coward, thou little valiant, thou great in villany." 3 It is a lamentable fact, that Poland has been thrice partitioned off amongst her three murderers. In 1773, after a bloody struggle for life, she was overpowered and her territory partially subdivided. Russia got 32,000, Austria 27,000, and Prussia 10,000 square miles. Not content with this monstrous iniquity, in which Poland was robbed of 71,000 square miles, another division took place in 1793, in which she lost no less than 120,000 square miles of her best territory, Russia taking 98,000, and Prussia 22,000 square miles. Nor was this all, another bloody struggle took place, and the remnant of Poland -a track of only 86,000 square miles, and a population of only 4,000,000, of what had once been a noble country of 280,000 square miles, and a population of 20,000,000-was to be blotted out of the map of Europe-Russia, as usual, in this last instance of diabolical robbery, appropriating to herself 43,500, Austria 20,900, and Prussia 21,000 square miles. This damnable act of spoliation took place in the year of our Lord 1795. Alluding to Suvorov, the Russian commander. He had only the intelligence and ferocity of the butcher's dog; he paid no attention to cleanliness nor dress; he preferred sleeping on hay or straw, wore no body-linen; he frequently drilled his troops with his coat off, the knee-bands of his white serge breeches Nor naked Bigotry presume t' insult The majesty of God! through chanting Greeks, While tortured nations groaned to please such monstrous guilt!1 XVII. "Can such things be!" and Providence still live? Dare murderers add blasphemy to guilt! unfastened, with but one boot on, and his stockings about his heels. He enforced terrible discipline amongst his soldiers, by means of an improved knout, fashioned by himself. It was a thick square thong of leather, three feet six inches long, very thick at the edges, attached by a ring to the end of a stick two feet long, and made to play like a flail. His cruelty, ferocity, and religious hypocrisy were dreadful; his greatest acts of hellish cruelty were done in the name of God and religion. At the burning and sacking of Praga, it is enough to say, that 12,000 of the inhabitants, of both sexes and every age, besides two-thirds of the disarmed Polish soldiers, were shot, bayoneted, sabred, perished in the flames, or were driven into and drowned in the Vistula. A church was no sanctuary for Suvorov's "children," the massacre was equally unsparing within as without the temples of religion. The priest was slain at the altar; the woman, as she knelt in prayer; the girl, wildly clasping the crucifix or her mother's neck. Before eleven o'clock forenoon, the life-blood poured forth like water of 22,000 human beings-so swift had been the destruction, testified alike to the glory of Suvorov, and the long-suffering of Him by whom they had been created in His own image. The city of Warsaw was only saved from a like dreadful fate by the breaking down of the bridge over the Vistula, and its unconditional surrender. When met by the magistracy with the keys upon a velvet cushion, he took the keys in his hand, pressed them to his lips, and looking upwards said, with an impious audacity scarcely credible: "I render Thee thanks, Almighty God, that Thou hast not exacted the same price for these keys as for the possession of Praga." For such hellish services the Empress Catherine sent him a Field-Marshal's baton and uniform, adorned with jewels worth 50,000 crowns, with the note, "Field-Marshal General Count Alexander Suvorov-Rymniski, I make you my compliments on all your victories, especially on your carrying the intrenchments of Praga." Ever faithful to his "religious principles," the newly-created Field-Marshal would not assume the vestments and insignia of his new rank till they had received the benediction of the Church: which ceremony was performed with much bizarre pomp in the Cathedral of Warsaw. The uniform, &c., having been placed upon the high altar, like an antic buffoon, he ranged as many chairs along the aisle as there were generals in the Russian service whom he had overleaped in rank; then entering the cathedral at a run, in his shirt, jumped over the chairs one by one, dressed himself in his new uniform, "and devoutly joined in the Te Deum." Ah! fathomless humanity! Byron hits him off in the following stanza "Suwarrow, who was standing in his shirt Before a company of Culmucks drilling, This great Philosopher was thus instilling 1 Or read-While Scripture blushed to feel it fed such monstrous guilt! C Te Deums howl, and pray Thee to forgive While Lust stood by to outrage what the "Sword" survives! XVIII. Eternal infamy, with trumpet tongue, Shall yet the deep and damning guilt proclaim !— Which Lethe's lake can neither quench nor quell, 1 Again alluding to Suvorov, the ruthless exterminator of half-disciplined Turks, and the pitiless destroyer of the defenceless Poles, he, as already shown, was one of the most callous and sanguinary-minded commanders who have so successfully helped to extend Russian despotism over the necks of so many murdered nations. At the sacking of the Turkish town of Ismael, 30,000 Turkish soldiers, 6000 women and children of the same nation, 2000 Moldavian and Armenian Christians, and 500 Jews, were massacred and mutilated without quarter and without mercy in the streets. Thousands of the Turks, incapable of enduring the sight of the horrid destruction in which all that was dear to them was involved, rushed desperately upon the bayonets of the enemy, to shorten their misery; while those who could reach the Danube, threw themselves headlong into it for that purpose. Owing to the frost, pits could not be dug quick enough, so that the dead and the dying were thrown into the river. When the massacre was scarcely over, Suvorov lost no time in celebrating a "solemn service of thanksgiving to the Almighty for the divine aid afforded" in effecting the inhuman butchery. This blasphemy ascended from the convent church of St. John, from the very midst of the heaps of slain and still writhing bodies, the shrieks, curses, pistol-shots incidental to the authorized pillage then in full career breaking in (from time to time) upon the intonations of the Greek priests, and the responses of the military audience, made it a veritable Te Deum of devils, ascribing to God the cruelties of Suvorov and his brutal serfs,-"Not unto us, O Lord; not unto us, but to Thy Name be all the glory!" In his despatch to Catherine he wrote "Glory to God and to the Empress" (Powers Eternal! such names mingled!) "Ismail's ours." "The town was entered. O Eternity! 'God made the country, and man made the town,' So Cowper says-and I begin to be Of his opinion, when I see cast down Rome, Babylon, Tyre, Carthage, Nineveh, All walls men know, and many never known; And pondering on the present and the past, To deem the woods shall be our home at last."-Don Juan. |