WAR AND THE HEARTH,

OR

THE INFLUENCE OF WAR ON DOMESTIC HAPPINESS.

THE Custom of war, hostile to all the interests of mankind, is peculiarly fatal to domestic happiness. It forbids marriage to its agents, and thus prevents the rise of families among them, as incompatible with their vagrant trade of blood. It disregards and rudely sunders the bonds of home. To raise its armies, and man its fleets, it takes the brother from his sisters, and the son from his parents, the husband from his wife, and the father from his children; nor can its operations be carried on without a wide and fearful amount of misery not only to families residing in the midst of its ravages, but to a still greater number connected with its victims by ties of kindred or affection. The single battle of Waterloo called forth wailings of domestic grief from a whole continent; nor can the slightest victory be won without sending a thrill of anguish unknown through the heart of two nations.

Just imagine the process of manning a fleet or an army. It is indispensable to the war-system, that rulers should have authority to force into their service as many of their subjects as they please, by any process which they may deem necessary or expedient. In some countries, they call first for volunteers; yet most of these are obtained by false representations, or the use of intoxicating drinks. The beardless boy, the thriftless husband, the reckless, desperate adventurer, bereft of reason by the maddening bowl, are coaxed to the fatal pledge, and then hurried away from home and friends to the camp or the war-ship, and forced into the work of human butchery as the business of their life. Most commonly, however, the ranks of war are filled by some species of compulsion. In England press-gangs, in a time of war, prowl around every seaport, to seize on any seaman, if not upon any landsman, they may chance to find, and drag him, hand-cuffed and manacled, on board some war-ship. Not a poor man in the British empire is safe from this species of outrageous oppression; and yet has the practice been continued for so many ages as now to form a part of the common law of the land, and to be justified not only by popular leaders in Parliament, but by grave, upright judges, the brightest luminaries of English law, as indispensable to her war-system!

Nor is the process of procuring recruits on the continent of Europe less fatal to the peace and happiness of families. Its vast armies are raised mainly by conscription; a species of compulsion the practical workings of which are truly and touchingly sketched

P. T. NO. LII

by an English poet in the following tale of a French prisoner who fell under his notice:

"Once I beheld a captive, whom the wars
Had made an inmate of the prison-house,
Cheering with wicker-work his dreary hours.
I asked his story. In my native tongue,
(Long use had made it easy as his own,)
He answered thus: Before these wars began,
I dwelt upon the willowy banks of Loire."
I married one who from my boyish days

Had been my playmate. One morn, I'll ne'er forget,
While choosing out the fairest little twigs,
To warp a cradle for our child unborn,
We heard the tidings, that the conscript-lot
Had fallen on me. It came like a death-knell.
The mother perished; but the babe survived;
And, ere my parting day, his rocking couch
I made complete, and saw him sleeping smile-
The smile that played erst on the chek of her,
Who lay clay cold. Alas! the hour soon came,
That forced iny fettered arms to quit my child.
And whether now he lives to deck with flowers
The sod upon his mother's grave, or lies
Beneath it by her side, I ne'er could learn.
I think he's gone; and now I only wish
For liberty and home, that I may see,

And stretch myself, and die upon their grave."

Of the heart-rending miseries incident to families from the progress of war, I hardly know where to begin, or where to end the illustrations furnished in all ages. Think of a siege or a battle, of a party of lawless, ruthless marauders, or the march of a brutal, exasperated army through a hostile or even a friendly country. 'It is difficult,' says an eye-witness, 'for the inhabitants of a peaceful territory to conceive the miseries incident to the theatre of such a sanguinary contest as that between the French and the allied forces. While Napoleon, hemmed in on all sides, now menaced one of his foes, and now sprang furiously upon another, the scene of this desultory warfare was laid waste in the most merciless manner. The soldiers on both parts, driven to desperation, became reckless and pitiless; and, straggling from their columns in all directions, they committed every species of excess upon the people. The peasants, with their wives and children, fled to caves, quarries and woods, where the latter were starved to death, and the former, collecting into small bodies, increased the terrors of war by pillaging the convoys of both armies, attacking small parties of all nations, and cutting off the sick, the wounded, and the stragglers. The repeated advance and retreat of the contending armies exasperated these evils; for every fresh band of plunderers that arrived, was savagely eager after spoil in proportion as the gleaning became scarce. In the words of Scripture, 'what the locust left, was devoured by the palmer-worm; what escaped the Baskirs, and Kirgas, and Croats of the Wolga, the Caspian, and Turkish frontier, was seized by the half-starved conscripts of Napoleon, whom want, hardship, and an embittered

spirit rendered as careless of the ties of country as the others were indifferent to the general claims of humanity. The towns and villages that were the scenes of actual conflict, were frequently burnt to the ground; and thus was the distress of the people vastly increased by extending the terrors of battle, with its accompaniments of slaughter, fire and famine, into the most remote and sequestered districts. Even the woods afforded no concealment, the churches no sanctuary; nor did the grave itself protect the relics of mortality. The villages were every where burnt, the farms wasted and pillaged, the abodes of man, and all that belongs to peaceful industry and domestic comfort, desolated and destroyed to such a degree, that wolves and other savage animals increased fearfully in the districts thus laid waste by human hands, ferocious as their own.'

Let me quote a few facts from the late wars of Europe. Every reader of history is familiar with the terrible assault of the republican forces upon Toulon. From the heights of Pharan they at length poured down such vollies of musketry and grape-shot, that the English and Spaniards who had come to the relief of the place, were compelled to retreat, and seek refuge in their ships. And now ensued a scene of overwhelming confusion and distress. The wretched inhabitants followed them in crowds to the beach, and implored their protection. Great efforts were made to convey as many as possible on board the ships; numbers of miserable wretches vainly plunged for this purpose into the sea; and others still left behind, shot themselves to avoid a more terrible death from their enraged assailants. Thus were the ships loaded with a heterogeneous mixture of different nations, with men, women and infants, with the sick of the hospitals, and mangled soldiers from their posts with their wounds undressed; while the whole harbor resounded with the cries of distraction and agony for husbands, wives and children left on shore. The scene was horrible beyond description, and rendered still more so by the flames of the city rapidly spreading in every direction, and blazing ships threatening every moment to explode, and blow all around into the air.

Glance at a specimen or two of the miseries inflicted by a retreating army. Murder and devastation,' says an eye-witness, 'marked the footsteps of the French in their retreat from Portugal; every house was a sepulchre, a cabin of horrors! In one small village, I counted seventeen dead bodies of men, women and children; and most of the houses were burnt to the ground. In a small town called Safrea, I saw twelve dead bodies lying in one house upon the floor; and every house contained traces of their wanton barbarity.'-'Often were the ditches,' says another, 'literally filled with clotted, coagulated blood, as with mire; the bodies of peasants, put to death like dogs, were lying there horribly mangled; little naked infants, only a year old or less, were found besmeared in the mud of the road, transfixed with bayonet wounds; and in one instance I myself saw a babe, not more than a month old, with the bayonet left still sticking in its neck!'

Let us listen to the tale of an English officer on the same ill

fated field. "Immediately after the capture of Ciudad Rodrigo, our soldiers, setting all restraint at defiance, and impelled by a brutish frenzy, gave loose to the foulest passions. Dispersed in parties of from four to thirty, they butchered the stragglers of the flying garrison, plundered the houses of the citizens, ransacked their cellars for liquor, and, brutalized by intoxication, sallied forth, yelling, and holding an infernal carnival of riot and burning, violation and massacre.

"Passing through a narrow street with two Scottish sergeants, I heard the shriek of a female; and, looking up, we saw at an open lattice, by the light of the lamp she bore, a girl about sixteen, her hair and dress disordered, and the expression of her olive countenance marked with anguish and extreme terror. A savage in scarlet uniform dragged her backward, accompanying the act with the vilest execrations in English. We entered the court-yard, where the hand of rapine had spared us the necessity of forcing a passage; and my companions, armed for whatever might ensue, kept steadily by me until we arrived at a sort of corridor, from the extremity of which issued the tones of the same feminine voice imploring mercy in the Spanish tongue. Springing forward, my foot slipped in a pool of blood; and, before I could recover, the door of the apartment whither we were hurrying, opened, and two soldiers of my own company discharged their muskets at us, slightly wounding one of the gallant Scots. Intemperance had blinded the ruffians, and frustrated their murderous intentions. We felled them to the ground, and penetrated into the chamber, where I had a hair-breadth escape from falling by the fury of another of the desperadoes. Parrying his bayonet which he aimed at my breast, I could not prevent its taking a less dangerous course, and lacerating my left cheek nearly from the lip to the eye; a frightful gash, but a light matter in comparison with the wretchedness visible around me.

"The room wherein we stood, contained the remnants of those decent elegancies which belong to the stranger's apartment in a dwelling of the middle class. Mutilated pictures, and fragments of expensive mirrors strewed the floor, which was uncarpeted, and formed of different kinds of wood curiously tesselated. An ebony cabinet, doubtless a venerable heir-loom, had suffered as if from the stroke of a sledge. Its contents, consisting of household documents, and touching domestic memorials, were scattered about at random. An antique sideboard lay overturned, and a torn mantilla on a sofa ripped, and stained with wine. The white drapery, on which fingers steeped in gore had left their traces, hung raggedly from the walls.

"Pinioning our prisoners, we barricaded the doors against intrusion, and proceeded to offer all the assistance and consolation in our power to the inmates of the desecrated mansion. On investigation, the sergeants found the dead body of a domestic whose fusil and dagger showed that he had fought for the roof which covered him. His beard had been burned in derision with gunpowder, and one of his ears was cut off, and thrust into his mouth!

In a garret recess for the storage of fruit, two female servants were hidden, who could scarcely be persuaded that they had nothing to fear. Having fled thither at the approach of their ferocious intruders, they had suffered neither injury nor insult. They came to the room where I lingered over an object unconscious, alas! of my commiseration, and calling, in accents half choked by sobs, upon Donna Clara! I pointed to the alcove where the heartbroken lady had flung herself on the bleeding corpse of her grayhaired father. She too might have had a sheltering place, could her filial piety have permitted her to remain there when her highspirited sire feebly strove to repel the violaters of his hearth. Master of a few Spanish phrases, I used them in addressing some words of comfort to the ill-starred girl. They were to her as the song of the summer-bird carolled to despair. Her sole return was a faintly recurring plaint which seemed to say, 'let my soul depart in peace!' I motioned to her attendants to separate her from her father's corpse; but they could not do it without a degree of force bordering on violence. Bidding them desist, I signified a desire that they should procure some animating restorative. A flask of wine was brought. The sergeants withdrew. One of the women held the lamp, while the other gently raised the head of her mistress. Kneeling by the couch in the alcove, I poured a little of the liquor into a glass, applied it to her lips, and then took it away, until I had concealed my uniform beneath the torn mantilla.

"I bless an all-merciful God that I have not a second time been doomed to witness aught so overwhelming in wo as the situation of that young and beautiful creature! She had battled with a might exceeding the strength of her sex, against nameless indignities, and she bore the marks of the conflict. Her maidenly attire was rent into shapelessness; her brow was bruised and swollen; her abundant hair, almost preternaturally black, streamed wildly over her bosom, revealing in its interstices fresh waving streaks of crimson which confirmed the tale of ultra-barbarian violence; and her cheek had borrowed the same fatal hue from the neck of her slaughtered parent, to whom, in her insensibility, she still clung with love strong in death! Through the means adopted, she gave tokens of reviving. Her hand still retained a small gold cross, and she raised it to her lips. The clouded lids were slowly expanded from her large dark eyes. A low, agonizing moan followed. I hastened to present the wine; but in the act the mantilla, concealing my uniform, fell from the arm which conveyed the glass. She shrieked appallingly, became convulsed, passed from fit to fit, and expired!"

Nor is this vivid, truthful picture of the woes carried by war into the bosom of families, a solitary case. War abounds with them, and cannot rage without multiplying them by hundreds and thousands. On the capture of Hamburg in 1813, the soldiers, with drawn swords and loaded muskets, ran from house to house, demanding of the citizens, your money and your women, or your life, INSTANTLY! All this, too, after they had suffered during the siege an incredible amount of cruelty and distress. The French com