Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, No. 362, December 1845Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, No. 362, December 1845
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
One fatal gift, however, Corsica made, in
return to France. From it came, within a few years, the man who sealed
the banishment of the Bourbons! and, tempting France by the ambition
of military success, inflicted upon her the heaviest mortality, and
the deepest shame known in any kingdom, since the fall of the Roman
empire. Whether this were that direct retribution for innocent blood,
which Providence has so often inflicted upon guilty nations; or
whether it were merely one of those extraordinary casualties which
circumstances make so impressive; there can be no question, that the
man came from Corsica who inflicted on France the heaviest calamities
that she had ever known; who, after leading her armies over Europe, to
conquests which only aroused the hatred of all nations, and after
wasting the blood of hundreds of thousands of her people in victories
totally unproductive but of havoc; saw France twice invaded, and
brought the nation under the ban of the civilized world!
France is at this moment pursuing the same course in Algiers, which
was the pride of her politicians in Corsica. She is pouring out her
gigantic force, to overwhelm the resistance of peasants who have no
defence but their naked bravery. She will probably subdue the
resistance; for what can be done by a peasantry against the
disciplined force and vast resources of a great European power,
applied to this single object of success? But, barbarian as the Moor
and the Arab are, and comparatively helpless in the struggle, the
avenger may yet come, to teach the throne of France, that there is a
power higher than all thrones; a tribunal to which the blood cries out
of the ground.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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