End of the world -- Fiction; Epidemics -- Fiction; Science fiction; Twenty-first century -- Fiction
When our exiles had first arrived, a truce was in existence between the
Turks and Greeks; a truce that was as sleep to the mortal frame, signal
of renewed activity on waking. With the numerous soldiers of Asia, with
all of warlike stores, ships, and military engines, that wealth and
power could command, the Turks at once resolved to crush an enemy,
which creeping on by degrees, had from their stronghold in the Morea,
acquired Thrace and Macedonia, and had led their armies even to the
gates of Constantinople, while their extensive commercial relations
gave every European nation an interest in their success. Greece
prepared for a vigorous resistance; it rose to a man; and the women,
sacrificing their costly ornaments, accoutred their sons for the war,
and bade them conquer or die with the spirit of the Spartan mother. The
talents and courage of Raymond were highly esteemed among the Greeks.
Born at Athens, that city claimed him for her own, and by giving him
the command of her peculiar division in the army, the
commander-in-chief only possessed superior power. He was numbered among
her citizens, his name was added to the list of Grecian heroes. His
judgment, activity, and consummate bravery, justified their choice. The
Earl of Windsor became a volunteer under his friend.
“It is well,” said Adrian, “to prate of war in these pleasant shades,
and with much ill-spent oil make a show of joy, because many thousand
of our fellow-creatures leave with pain this sweet air and natal earth.
I shall not be suspected of being averse to the Greek cause; I know and
feel its necessity; it is beyond every other a good cause. I have
defended it with my sword, and was willing that my spirit should be
breathed out in its defence; freedom is of more worth than life, and
the Greeks do well to defend their privilege unto death. But let us not
deceive ourselves. The Turks are men; each fibre, each limb is as
feeling as our own, and every spasm, be it mental or bodily, is as
truly felt in a Turk’s heart or brain, as in a Greek’s. The last action
at which I was present was the taking of ——. The Turks resisted to the
last, the garrison perished on the ramparts, and we entered by assault.
Every breathing creature within the walls was massacred. Think you,
amidst the shrieks of violated innocence and helpless infancy, I did
not feel in every nerve the cry of a fellow being? They were men and
women, the sufferers, before they were Mahometans, and when they rise
turbanless from the grave, in what except their good or evil actions
will they be the better or worse than we? Two soldiers contended for a
girl, whose rich dress and extreme beauty excited the brutal appetites
of these wretches, who, perhaps good men among their families, were
changed by the fury of the moment into incarnated evils. An old man,
with a silver beard, decrepid and bald, he might be her grandfather,
interposed to save her; the battle axe of one of them clove his skull.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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