Monday, December 01, 2008

No resistance

"Another circumstance was, that a great many of the inhabitants, both men and women were killed, which is most true; and the case was thus. The inhabitants, to show their over-forward zeal to defend the town, fought in the breach; nay, the very women to the honour of the Leicester ladies, if they like it, officiously did their parts; and after the town was then, and when, if they had any brains in their zeal, they would have kept their houses, and been quiet, they fired upon our men out of their widows, and from the tops of their houses, and threw tiles upon their heads; and I had several of my men wounded so, and seven or eight killed. This exasperated us to the last degree; and, finding one house better manned than ordinary, and many shot fired at us out of the windows, I caused my men to attack it, resolved to make them an example for the rest; which they did, and breaking open the doors, they killed all they found there, without distinction; and I appeal, to the world if they were to blame. If the parliament committee, or the Scots’ deputies, were here, they ought to have been quiet, since the town was taken; but they began with us, and, I think, brought it upon themselves. This is the whole case, so far as came within my knowledge, for which his majesty (Charles I) was so much abused."

How are circumstances different today from those described by Daniel Defoe about an attack on a town in the middle 1600's in England? The king at the time, Charles I, eventually was beheaded on the scaffold, but his death unfortunately, is just a footnote to disagreements that see-sawed throughout history. Those sacrificed in Mumbai recently didn’t (couldn’t) even choose to fight back like the women and town folk of Defoe’s reported incident. The fact that the women had the ‘b...s’ to fight back infuriated the cavaliers and soldiers causing them initiate the retaliatory slaughter. The leader of the attack justifies his actions to the reader and the world. If no resistence were offered, supposedly the resistors would have been spared. Not today. When killers take up arms - driven by insane logic - all bets are off.

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