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The Duel Between France and Germany by Charles Sumner
page 41 of 83 (49%)
own lips. It was France that first in history adopted this method
of war. Long ago, under Louis the Fourteenth, it became a
favorite; but it has not escaped the judgment of history.
Voltaire, with elegant pen, records that "this art, carried soon
among other nations, served only to multiply human calamities, and
more than once was dreadful to France, where it was invented."
[Footnote: Siecle de Louis XIV., Ch. XIV.: (Euvres, (edit. 1784-
89,) Tom. XX. p. 406.)

The bombardment of Luxembourg in 1683 drew from Sismondi, always
humane and refined, words applicable to recent events. "Louis the
Fourteenth," he says, "had been the first to put in practice this
atrocious and newly invented method of bombarding towns,....of
attacking, not fortifications, but private houses, not soldiers,
but peaceable inhabitants, women and children, and of confounding
thousands of private crimes, each one of which would cause horror,
in one great public crime, one great disaster, which he regarded
as nothing more than one of the catastrophes of war." [Footnote:
Histoire des Francis, Tom. XXV. pp. 452-53.] Again is the saying
fulfilled, "All they that take the sword shall perish with the
sword." No lapse of time can avert the inexorable law. Macbeth saw
it in his terrible imaginings, when he said,--

"But in those cases
We still have judgment here,--that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor."


And what instruction more bloody than the bombardment of a city,
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