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THE SIEGE OF ZARAGOZA.

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situation, or because some doubtful expression or gesture of distress had been misconstrued by their barbarous chiefs.

Several weeks of the most desperate fighting, with mines exploding in every quarter, had by this time destroyed a number of Zaragoza's brave defenders. Hitherto the play of the French mines had reduced the houses to ruins, and the soldiers were thus completely exposed to the fire from the next Spanish posts: the engineers, therefore, diminished the quantity of powder, that the interior only might fall and the outer walls stand; and this method was found successful. Hereupon the Spaniards, with ready ingenuity, saturated the timbers and planks of the houses with resin and pitch, and setting fire to those which could no longer be maintained, interposed a burning barrier, which often delayed the assailants for two days, and always prevented them from pushing their successes during the confusion that necessarily followed the bursting of the mines. The fighting was, however, incessant: a constant bombardment, the explosion of mines, the crash of falling buildings, clamorous shouts, and the continued echo of musquetry, deafened the ear, while volumes of smoke and dust clouded the atmosphere and lowered continually over the heads of the combatants, as, hour by hour, the French, with a terrible perseverance, pushed forward their approaches to the heart of the miserable but glorious city.

The besiegers continued to work with unremitted assiduity; and there was scarcely a public building or monastery that had not been approached by mines. Among others, the university, a large building on the Spanish side of the Cosso, was attacked simultaneously both on the right and left sides. A number of houses bordering on the Cosso being gained, a battery was established that raked that great thoroughfare above ground, while under it six galleries were carried, and six mines loaded, to explode at the same moment: but the spirit of the French army was now exhausted; they had laboured and fought without intermission for fifty days; they had crumbled the walls with their bullets, burst the convents with their mines, and carried the breaches with their bayonets: fighting above and beneath the surface of the earth, they had spared neither fire nor the sword; their bravest men were falling in the obscurity of a subterranean warfare; famine pinched them, and Zaragoza was still unconquered.

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The time, however, now drew near when further resistance was vain. Many thousand pounds of gunpowder were exploding in different places, the awful report of which mingled with the crash of the falling buildings and the dreadful cries of the agonized victims who were perishing amid the horrid fires. The bombardment, which had never ceased for nearly a month, had forced the women and children to take refuge in the vaults with which the city abounded. There the constant combustion of oil, the closeness of the atmosphere, unusual diet, and fear and restlessness of mind, had combined to produce a pestilence, which soon spread to the garrison. The strong and the weak, the daring soldier and the shrinking child, fell before it alike; and such was the state of the atmosphere, and the predisposition to disease, that the slightest wound gangrened and became incurable.

At this time the deaths were from four to five hundred daily: the living were unable to bury the dead; and thousands of carcases, scattered about the streets and court-yards, or piled in heaps at the doors of the churches, were left to dissolve in their own corruption, or to be licked up by the flames of the burning houses.

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The suburb, the greatest part of the walls, and onefourth of the houses, were in the hands of the French sixteen thousand shells, thrown during the bombardment, and the explosion of forty-five thousand pounds of powder in the mines, had shaken the city to its foundations; and the bones of more than forty thousand persons, of every age and sex, bore dreadful testimony to the constancy of the besieged.

1. Where is Zaragoza?

2. What horrid scene presented itself amid the bulwarks of war? 3. What was done by the besiegers on gaining the houses bordering on the Cosso?

4. Where did the women and children take refuge?

5. What was the dreadful consequence ?

6. How many shells had been thrown, pounds of gunpowder exploded, and lives lost, during this awful siege ?

Obs. Though Zaragoza is the correct way of spelling the word in the Spanish language, it is more usual in English works to see it written Saragossa.

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LESSON LIII.

FEBRUARY THE TWENTY-SECOND.

James Barry.

On this day, in 1806 (the very day on which he had completed his sixty-fifth year), died James Barry, a

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.

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celebrated painter. He was born in 1741, at Cork, where his father, who had been a builder, was master of a coasting vessel. This son was intended for the same occupation; but having a turn for drawing, he was suffered to follow his inclination. At the age of seventeen he attempted oil-painting; and before he was twenty-two he finished a picture on the "Landing of St. Patrick," which was exhibited at Dublin. This had the good fortune to attract the notice of Mr. Burke, who invited him to London, recommended him to his friends, and furnished him with the means of visiting Italy.

After an absence of five years he returned to England in 1771, and obtained some reputation by the paintings which he exhibited, particularly a large one of Venus. When the design was formed of decorating St. Paul's cathedral, Barry was engaged as one of the artists; but the scheme failed. In 1775 he published "An Inquiry into the real and imaginary Obstructions to the Acquisition of the Arts in England," in opposition to Winckelman. Two years afterwards he undertook the labour of decorating the great room belonging to the Society of Arts in the Adelphi ; and about the same time he was elected a royal academician. In 1782 Barry was chosen professor of painting, which situation he lost in 1799, through his own imprudence in mingling political and other extraneous subjects with his observations on the arts. He was also for the same offence expelled the academy. After this he lived in a very secluded manner. Some time before his death a subscription was entered into for kis benefit; but though an annuity was secured, he never lived to enjoy it.

1. What attracted the notice of Mr. Burke; and what followed ? 2. What work did Barry publish; and in what year?

3. In what was Barry imprudent; and what were the consequences?

LESSON LIV.

FEBRUARY THE TWENTY-THIRD.

Sir Joshua Reynolds.

ON the twenty-third of February, 1792, expired, at his house in Leicester Fields, London, Sir Joshua Reynolds, a most eminent painter, and many years President of the Royal Academy. He was the son of a clergyman at Plympton, in Devonshire, where he was born in 1723. He early discovered a predilection for the art of drawing,

and he was accordingly, at the age of seventeen, placed with Hudson, the most eminent portrait-painter in London. Having remained there three years, he shortly afterwards proceeded to Rome, and other parts of Italy; and on his return to London he was soon acknowledged as the best master of his art in all that related to grace, taste, and the harmony of colouring. Rejecting the stiff, unvaried, and unmeaning attitudes of former artists, he gave to his figures air and action adapted to their characters, and thus invested them with something of the dignity of history. When the Royal Academy was instituted, in 1768, he was unanimously chosen President, and received the honour of knighthood.

Sir Joshua was not merely a good painter, he was also distinguished for his literary abilities, and moreover was a most pleasing companion. He numbered among his intimate friends several of the most distinguished characters of the day; and was a member of the celebrated club which contained the names of Johnson, Garrick, Burke, Goldsmith, and others of first-rate literary renown. Of his character and talents the following lines, by Goldsmith, are briefly yet strongly expressive:—

"Here Reynolds is laid; and, to tell you my mind,
He has not left a wiser or better behind:
His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand,
His manners were gentle, complying, and bland.
Still born to improve us in every part,-

His pencil our faces, his manners our heart."

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What happened to Sir Joshua Reynolds when the Royal Academy was instituted ?

2. Repeat the lines written by Goldsmith on Sir Joshua Reynolds ?

LESSON LV!

FEBRUARY THE TWENTY-FOURTH.

Battle of Pavia.

ON the 24th of February, 1525, was fought the celebrated battle of Pavia, in the North of Italy, between the French and Imperialists; when the former were defeated, and their king, Francis L., after fighting with heroic valour, and killing seven men with his own hand, was at last obliged to surrender himself prisoner. The unfortunate monarch wrote to his mother, Louisa of Savoy, regent of the kingdom in his absence, the melancholy news of his captivity, conceived in these dignified and expressive terms: Tout

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est perdu, Madame, hormis l'honneur. He was detained a year and twenty days.

That war is a complication of physical and moral evil, few will, in theory, deny, with how little soever compunction or reluctance potentates have, in every age, resorted to it as the amende honorable for the most trifling grievances. Viewed, indeed, as a mere game, combined of skill and hazard, it is of all pursuits the most stirring and glorious. Abstracted from their consequences,

"The triumph and the vanity,

The rapture of the strife,

The earthquake voice of victory,"

must constitute a state of turbulent excitement, in which we can conceive some minds may find an appropriate delight; and to such all other actions and circumstances of life must, compared with the joys of battle, appear insipid. The fearful alternation of the mind between triumph and despair, the vastness of the stake, and the intensity of effort to which all the energies of nature seem then to be wrought up; - above all, those undefined notions of martial glory, which have been found to prevail over all fear and all suffering, must give to the hour of actual contest a strange and fearful ecstasy.

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With martial achievements and martial glory, the studies of our earliest years have taught us to associate ideas of manliness, heroism, and moral grandeur: and from the age of Homer to that of modern romance, poetry has been employed in throwing over scenes of horrible destruction an air of chivalrous enterprise and picturesque sublimity. But to those who know war in its details of enormity and misery, who have followed in the rear of its ravages tracked its steps by the whitening bones of its victims-to those who, after the conflict, have listened, in the silence of midnight, to the faint groans or dying yells which bespoke the remains of life in some hundreds of agonizing sufferers or who, in moods of deeper abstraction, have seemed to hear the sullen plunge which each individual spirit, when forced from its every lurking place of life, has made in the dark waters that bound mortality, the shriek of separation, and the awful murmurs of eternity to those who think of war as connected with these details, and with the widow's curse and the orphan's wretchedness, it is, indeed, an unutterable evil.

1. In what year was the battle of Pavia fought, and between whom?

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