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 BETWEEN THE CZAR AND THE SULTAN. 291 XL Troops are sometimes obliged to kill insurgents chap. in actual fight, and unarmed people standing in L. the line of fire often share the fate of the com- b™wwch" batants ; what that is the whole world under- Squished stands. But also an officer has sometimes caused wisim- people to be put to death, not because they were B ' us fighting against him, nor even because they were hindering the actual operations of the troops, but because he has imagined that under some prob- able chang-3 of circumstance their continued presence might become a source of inconvenience or danger, and he has therefore thought it right to have them shot down by way of precaution ; but generally such an act as this has been pre- ceded by the most earnest entreaties to disperse, and by repeated warnings. This may be called a precautionary slaughter of bystanders, who are foolhardy or perverse, or wilfully obstructive to the troops. Again, it has happened that a slaugh- ter of this last-mentioned sort has occurred, but without having been preceded by any such re- quest or warning as would give the people time ' ville se jetaient comme des tigres sur les prisonniers attaches ' les mains derriere le dos. II3 les assommaient h. coup c!e 4 casse-tSte. lis les laissaient ralant sur la pierce oh. plusieurs • d'entre eux ont expire. ... II en est ainsi ni plus ni • moins : nous l'avons vu des fenStres dc nos cellules qui s'ouv- • raient sur la cour.'—Le Coup d'Elat, par Xavier Durrieu, ancien Representant du Peuple, pp. 39, iO.—NotetoithEdir tlon. 1563.