Sublime was that devotion, superhuman that craft; but it is only by weapons from the armoury of the Unseen that human creatures can long confront such horrors in a wicked cause.

Superstition, in those days at least, was a political force absolutely without limitation, and most adroitly did the agents of Spain and Rome handle its tremendous enginery against unhappy France.

For the hideous details of the most dreadful sieges recorded in ancient or modern times were now reproduced in Paris.

Not a revolutionary circumstance, at which the world had shuddered in the accounts of the siege of Jerusalem, was spared.

Men devoured such dead vermin as could be found lying in the streets.