a monstrous enormity should be intended. That
their rebellion would be put down by force of
arms was what they well knew they must
expect, if their sovereign felt himself strong
enough to venture on doing it. But that, the
head of the Christian Church should, in the face
of Europe, and in the middle of the nineteenth
century, calmly determine to deliver over a city,
in which there must in any case be at least
women and children innocent of all offence
against him, to the unspeakable horrors of saccage,
appeared to the citizens of Perugia wholly
incredible.

During the night, however, of the nineteenth,
two deserters from the Papal army reached the
city; and these men confirmed the terrible
report. At last, a few hours before the struggle
began, the provisional government learnt that
the incredible horror was but too true. The
fact that the Papal government had promised
the vile horde ot mercenaries, the refuse of
all nations, that composed its so-called Swiss
troops, the sack of the city, was communicated
to a gentleman representing the French government,
by telegraph, from a person in high
authority at Rome. The giunta in their statement
refer to the telegraph registers for confirmation
of this fact. It was afterwards known that, on
a portion of the troops refusing to march against
Perugia, the formal promise of being allowed to
sack the city was held out to them as an
inducement.

With the knowledge of this horrible fate
before them, it is easy to imagine how the hours
of that summer night must have passed in
Perugia, and with what sort of feelings husbands
and fathers went to their stations at the gates
and walls on the morning of the twentieth.

III.

IT was nearly three in the afternoon of the
twentieth before the Papal soldiers reached the
city. They had already on their way given a
foretaste ot their devoted zeal in the execution
of the work committed to them. About three
miles from the city there is a little hamlet at
the bridge over the Tiber, called San Giovanni.
There, the house of an aged man who had given
no sort of offence to the government was broken
into, one of his servants killed, another wounded,
the house plundered, and the wine in the cellars
distributed among the troops. A fine of two
thousand crowns was demanded of him, and he
was dragged off to prison.

Having thus tasted blood, and being heated
with wine, they came on to the suburbs
of the city. There was there a large woollen
manufactory, which was first sacked
and then burned. The people, who saw their
means of earning their bread being thus
destroyed, would have attempted to put
out the fire, but they were thrust back and
bid to "let it burn." Various dwelling-houses
and shops were plundered, and their owners
murdered in the same suburb. The statement
of the provisional government gives in each case
the name and description of the victim. Here,
a blacksmith and his wife killed; there, a nun in
prayer shot through her two uplifted hands;
here, a mother bayoneted to death, and her
daughter insulted while striving to stanch the
mother's wounds. In the same suburb there is
a Benedictine monastery, whose inmates were
known or suspected to be favourable to the
popular cause, or not sufficiently active on the
other side. The convent was sacked, every
atom of furniture smashed, the archives were
dispersed, and a valuable library was utterly
destroyed. Several monks were killed, and the
abbot's cross and chain were snatched from his
neck.

Then came the attack on the walls. For
three hours some five hundred citizens kept the
invaders at bay, but the conflict was too
unequal. Ammunition failed, and not even despair
could enable five hundred men to beat off two
thousand two hundred. The secretary to the
corporation, Giuseppe Porta, was then sent forth
waving a white flag above his head, and bearing
the surrender of the city. But, he was shot
down with his truce flag in his hand before he
had advanced many yards from the gateway.
His clothes were dragged off, his body was
disfigured with needless bayonet thrusts, and the
corpse lay by the roadside for the next twenty-
four hours. It was but the fitting prelude to
the atrocities performed that evening in the
hapless city. The members of the giunta in
their published statement declare that they have
not attempted to give a complete, account of
the massacres committed in cold blood, and of
other more indescribable atrocities perpetrated
by the unrestrained troops. Yet the long list
they have put on record is too sickening in its
monotonous repetitions of barbarities for
reproduction in these columns.

A girl flying, half-crazed with terror, from
the scene of her mother's murder, is pursued
and dragged back by two officers, who compel
her to serve them with food, while the bleeding
corpse of her mother is lying by. A dressmaker's
house, in which there were some six
or seven girls at work, and where there was not
a single man on the premises, was broken
into, and, while the trembling girls threw
themselves on their knees and offered whatever little
money or ornaments they had, they were twice
fired on, and one was left dead and a second was
desperately wounded. At the house of one
noble family, the soldiers filled many carts with
booty to be carried off to the barracks of the
gendarmerie. Even the hospital was not spared.
More than fifty shots were fired at random
among the beds, while the sick strove to save
themselves by dragging themselves under the
bedsteads. A crippled beggar at a street corner
and a poor idiot staring at the scene were slaughtered.
At the principal hotel in the city the
landlord—a man who had never meddled with
politics in any way—went down to his house
door to explain that his hotel contained only
passing travellers who could have nothing to do
with the rebellion of the city. He was shot
dead on his door-sill, his house was sacked from