Memorials and Other Papers — Volume 1De Quincey, Thomas
General
Memorials and Other Papers — Volume 1
De Quincey, Thomas
English essays
"The success of the Greek marine in this first expedition," says
Mr. Gordon, "was not confined to merely spreading the insurrection
throughout the Archipelago: a swarm of swift armed ships swept the sea
from the Hellespont to the waters of Crete and Cyprus; captured every
Ottoman trader they met with, and put to the sword, or flung overboard,
the Mahometan crews and passengers; for the contest already assumed a
character of terrible ferocity. It would be vain to deny that they were
guilty of shocking barbarities; at the little island of Castel Rosso, on
the Karamanian shore, they butchered, in cold blood, several beautiful
Turkish females; and a great number of defenceless pilgrims (mostly old
men), who, returning from Mecca, fell into their power, off Cyprus, were
slain without mercy, because they would not renounce their faith." Many
such cases of hideous barbarity had already occurred, and did afterwards
occur, on the mainland. But this is the eternal law and providential
retribution of oppression. The tyrant teaches to his slave the crimes
and the cruelties which he inflicts; blood will have blood; and the
ferocious oppressor is involved in the natural reaction of his own
wickedness, by the frenzied retaliation of the oppressed. Now was indeed
beheld the realization of the sublime imprecation in Shakspeare: "one
spirit of the first-born Cain" did indeed reign in the hearts of men;
and now, if ever upon this earth, it seemed likely, from the dreadful
_acharnement_ which marked the war on both sides,--the _acharnement_
of long-hoarded vengeance and maddening remembrances in the Grecian, of
towering disdain in the alarmed oppressor,--that, in very simplicity of
truth, "_Darkness would be the burier of the dead._"
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