the first place, for the French army. Scarcity became utter
want, and want became famine. In the most gorgeous palaces of
that gorgeous city, no less than in the humblest tenements of
its humblest poor, death was busy; not the momentary death of
battle or massacre, nor the speedy death of pestilence, but the
lingering and most miserable death of famine. Infants died
before their parents' eyes, husbands and wives lay down to
expire together. A man whom I saw at Genoa in 1825, told me,
that his father and two of his brothers had been starved to
death in this fatal siege. So it went on, till in the month of
June, when Napoleon had already descended from the Alps into
the plain of Lombardy, the misery became unendurable, and
Massena surrendered. But before he did so, twenty thousand
innocent persons, old and young, women and children, had died
by the most horrible of deaths which humanity can endure. Other
horrors which occurred besides during this blockade, I pass
over; the agonizing death of twenty thousand innocent and
helpless persons requires nothing to be added to it.

"Now, is it right that such a tragedy as this should take
place, and that the laws of war should be supposed to justify
the authors of it? Conceive having been an officer in Lord
Keith's squadron at that time, and being employed in stopping
the food which was being brought for the relief of such misery.
For the thing was done deliberately; the helplessness of the
Genoese was known; their distress was known; it was known that
they could not force Massena to surrender; it was known that
they were dying daily by hundreds, yet week after week, and
month after month, did the British ships of war keep their iron
watch along all the coast; no vessel nor boat laden with any