Military life in Italy : sketches - Societa italiana di storia militare

THE CHOLERA OF 1867. 379
people, armed with scythes, picks, guns, assembled, ran tumultuously
about the country roads trying to put the poisoners to
death. They menaced or assaulted the barracks of the carabineers
and soldiers ;
broke into the physicians' houses and
sacked them ;
burst into the pharmacies, and destroyed and
displaced every thing invaded the offices of the
; Commune,
tore the national banner ;
burned the papers and registers ;
forced the national guards to hunt the country with them in
search of poisoners looked for them in the houses
; ; thought
they had found them ; obliged them with daggers at their
throats to imagine and confess their accomplices murdered
;
them, lacerated their bodies, and burned them in the streets
and squares. Entire families, accused of poisoning, were
suddenly beseiged at night by a crowd of common people ;
and old men, women, and children fell with their throats cut
at each other's feet, without having time to exculpate themselves
or plead for mercy. They burned houses and scattered
the ruins. At Via Grande, Belpasso, Gangi, Menfi, Monreale,
Rossano, Morano, Frassineto, Porcile, in the Potentino, and
Avellinese, in a hundred other places there were continuous
gatherings, and rebellions, and horrible deeds of bloodshed.
Every day the populace found a stone, a rag, or some object
which they fancied was saturated with poison. They gathered
in crowds at the syndics, carrying the poisoned object with
them ; they had physicians and chemists come to experiment
with it,
and desired that the results of the experiment should
be as they declared that they ought to be, or else they threatened
them with violence. In some places the madness of the
people reached such a point, that the majority of the citizens
were "obliged to barricade themselves in their houses with