The Roman Traitor, Vol. 2

by Henry William Herbert

Childe Harold.

The battle was at an end; the sun had set; the calm and silvery moon was sailing through the azure skies; as peaceful as though her pure light shone upon sights of happiness alone, and quiet. The army of the commonwealth had returned to their camp victorious, but in sadness, not triumph.

Of the magnificent array, which had marched out that morning from the Prætorian gate, scarce two-thirds had returned at sun-set.

And the missing were the best, the bravest, the most noble of the host; for all the most gallant had fallen dead in that desperate struggle, or had sunk down faint, with wounds and bloodshed, beside the bodies of their conquered foemen.

Of the rebels there was not a remnant left; some had escaped from that dread route; and of that mighty power, which at the close of day was utterly exterminated, it is on record that neither in the combat, while it lasted, nor in the slaughter which followed it, was any free born citizen taken—a living captive.

For the numbers engaged on both sides it is probable that never in the annals of the world was there the like carnage; nor is this wonderful, when the nature of the[pg 235] ground, which rendered flight almost impossible to the vanquished, the nature of the weapons, which rendered almost every wound surely mortal, and the nature of the strife, which rendered the men of either party pitiless and desperate, are all taken into consideration.

In long ranks, like grass in the mower's swathes, the rebel warriors lay, with their grim faces, and glazed eyes, set in that terrible expression of ferocity which is always observed on the lineaments of those who have died from wounds inflicted by a stabbing weapon; and under them, or near them, in ghastly piles were heaped, scarce less in number, the corpses of their slaughtered conquerors. So equal was the havoc; so equal the value which the men had set on their own lives, and on those of their enemies.

Never perhaps had there been such, or so signal, a retribution. They who had taken to the sword had perished by the sword, not figuratively but in the literal meaning of the words. Stabbers by trade, they had fallen stabbed, by the hands of those whom they had destined to like massacre.

With the exception of the five chiefs who had already wrestled out their dark spirits, in the Tullianum, slavishly strangled, there was no traitor slain save by the steel blade's edge.

The field of Pistoria was the tribunal, the ruthless sword the judge and executioner, by which to a man the conspirators expiated their atrocious crimes.