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

THE CHOLERA OF 1867. 409
brutally execrated by the very people to whom they were
sacrificing their rest, health, and life !
But for them, the continual risk of their lives, and the being
obliged to defend them so frequently from the violence of an
insensate mob, was perhaps a less painful thought and a less
grave care than the duty of protecting the lives of other citizens
from the same violence, and threatened for the same cause.
Every day they were obliged to disarm and quell a mob
blinded with fury and thirsting for blood, and to drag
from its hands the victims, who were almost always beaten,
covered with blood, often half dead, and sometimes already
killed.
Sometimes when they could not do any thing else, they
were forced to fight for the posssession of the bodies, so that
they should not be mutilated and dragged through the streets,
or given a prey to the beasts or flames. They were obliged to
dash one by one into a crowd of armed people, who, pressing
and undulating here and there, separated and squeezed them
so that they could not have used their weapons had it been
necessary to do so, and any one of them could have been
stabbed without the others knowing any thing
about it. Yet
they were obliged to trust themselves to that maddened crowd,
and coax and beseech them to be quiet, as every threat would
have been in vain, as in rousing their anger, they would
have been likely to provoke a tumult, and cause fresh bloodshed,
which, unfortunately, not unfrequently occurred. Yet,
despite this, many lives were spared, much bloodshed saved
and many acts of brutality prevented, especially
in those
places where the soldiers were not suspected of poisoning, or in
those days when this suspicion no longer existed.
One example will suffice for all.