Note 138 — Chapter XXIII

Footnote 138: The Author is compelled to express his regret that some of our own modern writers (among others Goldsmith and Mackintosh) have been led to take a different estimate of the character of this transaction. Whether their judgments were formed after a careful weighing of the several accounts furnished by contemporary authors and eye-witnesses of the conflict, or whether they allowed their feelings of philanthropy, and their abhorrence of cruelty, to dictate their sentence in this case, the Author cannot refer to their works without appealing from them to the facts as they stand in those undisputed records which were accessible alike to them and to ourselves. On this subject Rapin, Carte, Holinshed, Nicolas, with others, may be consulted.(back)