Since then a guerilla warfare has been carried on among the mountains with uncertain results, but with great atrocity on both sides. In such matters religion counts for little, human nature for everything; and there seems no good reason _a priori_ for doubting the worst instances of Christian atrocity that we heard of. But granting that the Christians were guilty, as our Consul asseverated, of the terrible _auto da fè_ of Ljubinje, the blame must be laid at the door, not of the poor wretches who perpetrated these enormities, but of the tyrants who have brutalized them for centuries; just as the worst horrors of the French Revolution were but a counter-stroke to the accumulated misdeeds of the despotism that had preceded it. It is also true that the rayahs have in some instances forced Christian villages to join their cause by burning the crops and houses of the recalcitrants; but if desperate men, standing at bay against overwhelming numbers, have been forced to seek recruits by this means, it is that long-continued tyranny has enslaved the very spirit of many Christians. As with the miserable provincials of the Roman empire, who saw themselves annually pillaged by barbarian invaders, it was not that injuries were wanting which should have urged freemen to take up arms, but that the sense of injury itself—the last relic of self-respect—had been deadened within them:— Jam nulli flebile damnum! Sed cursus sollemnis erat, campusque furori Expositus; sensumque malis detraxerat usus.[295]