When, seventy years ago, the Roman people assisted by the French, threw off the yoke of their miserable government and proclaimed the Republic, a great many malcontents, mostly of the aristocratic classes, south refuge in the mountain passes of the Apennines – gathered around them bands of armed outlaws and bandits, and commenced a predatory warfare against the republicans and their French allies. They committed for a long time all kinds of outrages, arson, rapine and murder. The French troops sent against them were waylaid and shot down from behind bushes, or inaccessible mountain gorges; travelers were plundered and murdered, and the whole country devastated. At last the matter was laid before Napoleon, at that time commander-in-chief of the French troops in Italy, and he issued the following orders:
1. All outlaws, couth with arms in hand, assaulting our troops or peaceable citizens, are immediately to be shot, without trial.
2. All dwellings, from which our troops have been fired on, to be burnt down; of the inhabitants, if they cannot prove their innocence beyond a doubt, the males over twenty years of age be sent to the gallows, the females to our hospitals as nurses, washerwomen, etc., the children to the house of refuge.
3. For every civilian murdered, the district in which the crime is committed pays 5,000 francs: for every soldier, double the amount; besides reimbursements for all that is plundered. The money to be taken firstly from the avowed malcontents; if not sufficient, then from the so-called neutrals, and lastly from the loyal citizens, whose cowardice permits such outrages.
One short month after these orders were passed, and about a dozen instances promptly executed, order was restored, and the Roman Republic soon became known as a peaceable – and safe country.
– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, May 3, 1862, p. 1
1. All outlaws, couth with arms in hand, assaulting our troops or peaceable citizens, are immediately to be shot, without trial.
2. All dwellings, from which our troops have been fired on, to be burnt down; of the inhabitants, if they cannot prove their innocence beyond a doubt, the males over twenty years of age be sent to the gallows, the females to our hospitals as nurses, washerwomen, etc., the children to the house of refuge.
3. For every civilian murdered, the district in which the crime is committed pays 5,000 francs: for every soldier, double the amount; besides reimbursements for all that is plundered. The money to be taken firstly from the avowed malcontents; if not sufficient, then from the so-called neutrals, and lastly from the loyal citizens, whose cowardice permits such outrages.
One short month after these orders were passed, and about a dozen instances promptly executed, order was restored, and the Roman Republic soon became known as a peaceable – and safe country.
– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, May 3, 1862, p. 1
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