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

380 MILITARY LIFE.
some provisions, living shut up like prisoners, from the continual
danger of being accused of being poisoners and killed.
This course aroused their suspicions more strongly ; they
assaulted the houses, and a veritable struggle ensued. In
the places and during the days in which, on account of the
mildness of the disease the people were less brutal, those accused
of poisoning were only vituperated, beaten, and then
dragged, covered with blood, before the syndic. Sometimes
the municipal functionaries, frightened by the exasperation
of the crowd, did not dare try to dissuade them from their
bloody designs, and exhort them to spare their poor unfortunate
victims, so replied, as they did in the village of San
Nicola that, "they had better do what they thought best."
And the reply had not been made before the wretched creatures
lay on the ground immersed in blood and no longer
retaining any semblance to human beings. The municipalities,
unless one makes an exception of those in the principal
cities, menaced and abused every day as they were, had lost
all their authority and become quite powerless to put in force
the most necessary provisions for the public health, because in
fact they were obliged to forestall and grant every wish or
desire of the people in order to avoid more deplorable consequences.
At first the people insisted that no living soul should
be allowed to enter the place, and the municipality established
a rigorous cordon around the district, and so all communication
was cut off ;
but hardly did they begin to feel the bad
effects of this cessation of intercourse, when they wished to
have the cordon removed ; they thus increased the epidemic,
and once more were obliged to replace the cordon. And the
same thing happened with all the other precautions, now