Note 51 — Chapter II · THE MEANS OF CONDUCTING WAR

If we have principally in view the employment of uncivilized and barbarous troops on a European seat of war, that is simply because the war of 1870 lies nearest to us in point of time and of space. On a level with it is the employment of Russo-Asiatic nationalities in the wars of emancipation, of Indians in the North-American War, of the Circassians in the Polish Rising, of the Bashi-bazouks in the Russo-Turkish War, etc. As regards the Turcos, a Belgian writer Rolin-Jacquémyns said of them in regard to the war of 1859, “les allures et le conduite des Turcos avaient soulevé d’universels dégoûts.” On the other side it is not to be forgotten that a section of the French Press in 1870 praised them precisely because of their bestialities and incited them to such things, thus in the Independance algerienne: “Arrière la pitié! arrière les sentiments d’humanité! Mort, pillage et incendie!”