Page:Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1862).djvu/151

 axes. Before them rode two German trumpeters blowing their trumpets, and after them went a drummer with a drum, and a piper with a rustic pipe. After them came some hundreds of carriages, on which were many hundred women, children, girls and boys, on whom it was melancholy to gaze, and especially to see how mothers took care of their children still at the breast, and held by the hand, or carried, other little things of one or two years old. Some old grandmothers were lamenting aloud, and wailing as they held in their hands the heads of their slaughtered husbands. Then there was shouting and exultation on the part of the Turks, who were delighted at the victory, and lauded Hassan Pasha for having sent these Christians to Constantinople, as a conqueror, crying out:—“Asserim Hassan Bassa!” “God help Hassan Pasha!” In the morning they led away the tithe of the captives, which belonged to the Emperor, and sent the remainder for sale to Aurat-bazar, or woman-market. It is, indeed, a melancholy sight in that market-place, when a Christian is the spectator, how his fellow-Christian is there sold, and how he is dealt with; for there one buys the mother, another the child, another a boy, another a girl, and thus they are dispersed into different countries, and never meet each other again till death.

In this market, in one place sit old men, in another young men of ripe age, in another place boys; there sit girls, here old women, there young girls, and in another place women suckling their children. Whoever wishes to purchase a captive leads him into one of the separate rooms, which are built on the market-place, strips him naked, inspects all his limbs, and, if he likes him, buys