combatants in the Thirty Years’ War; it was hardly known to Cromwell; but it is known now.
The Greek, when he invaded a country, not only wasted the harvests of the year, but cut down the fruit-trees, which were the permanent wealth of the land. It was a common threat to an enemy, that “his cicadas should chirp upon the ground.” The precept of Moses is, “When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them; for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man’s life) to employ them in the siege: only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat, thou shalt destroy and cut them down; and thou shalt build bulwarks against the city that maketh war with thee, until it be subdued.”
The heroes of Homer drag at once to their bed the unhappy woman whose city has been stormed, and whose kinsmen have been slaughtered before her eyes; and the female captives of Achilles dare not let their tears flow except under cover of a feigned mourning for Patroclus. Nor did the captive retain any personal rights: she was just as the rest of the booty, and became the absolute slave of the victor’s lust. But the Hebrew law (Deut. xxi. 10,) says, “When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the Lord thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive, and seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldest have her to thy wife; then thou shalt
