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> Someone took advantage of a catastrophe to steal one of my most precious belongings… This is the type of stuff that one would expect to happen centuries ago, like piracy, only to find out it's still alive and kicking. Quoting from chapter XIX of "Les Misérables" (1862): > Every army has a rear-guard, and it is that which must be blamed. Bat-like creatures, half brigands and lackeys; all the sorts of vespertillos that that twilight called war engenders; wearers of uniforms, who take no part in the fighting; pretended invalids; formidable limpers; interloping sutlers, trotting along in little carts, sometimes accompanied by their wives, and stealing things which they sell again; beggars offering themselves as guides to officers; soldiers’ servants; marauders; armies on the march in days gone by,—we are not speaking of the present,—dragged all this behind them, so that in the special language they are called “stragglers.” No army, no nation, was responsible for those beings; they spoke Italian and followed the Germans, then spoke French and followed the English. (...) > Nevertheless, on the night from the 18th to the 19th of June, the dead were robbed. Wellington was rigid; he gave orders that any one caught in the act should be shot; but rapine is tenacious. The marauders stole in one corner of the battlefield while others were being shot in another. |