Note 3 — Chapter XXVI · SIEGE OF GERONA.

Marshal St. Cyr has the following remark upon this carnage, after observing that it proved useful as an example to other towns: La gloire de defendre ses foyers domestiques, menacés par l’étranger, est grande, la plus grande de toutes, peut-être: mais la vertu qui y fait prétendre, ne serait point la première des vertus, si elle pouvait être pratiquée sans peril. It must cost the heart something to reason thus even in a just war. Marshal St. Cyr tells us, indeed, that le soldat devient naturellement cruel à la longue: ... the more careful, therefore, should he be not to sear his feelings and his conscience by such reflections as this.