all their engagements, generosity to adversaries who deserved but little of it, courtesy in their tents such as none of us could surpass, and few could equal, a splendor of equipment that even Louis did not approach, and a reasonableness in their demands that put our violent and unjustifiable intrusion to the blush. Pretending to honor the birthplace of the Prince of Peace, we rendered it a scene of rapine, massacre, and the wantonness of bloodshed. Obeying the imperious summons of the vicegerent of Christ to abandon our country, its interests, its people, its altars and its peace, we returned,—such of us as did return,—to find our estates in the hands of monks, our dignities usurped by bishops, our wealth collected by the agents of the vicegerent under dreadful terrorism, and our families impoverished, and too often glad to receive a pittance at the gate of that monastery which had arisen from the proceeds of our land mortgaged fora soldier’s outfit. Such a revolution has our wild sentimentalism wrought upon us!
“In Livonia we acted simply as robbers without even an excuse, except the lust for land disguised as an ardor for the cross. In furtherance of this unholy violence we cultivated a sense of honor, a chivalrous fortitude, a sterling adherence to truth, an abhorrence of falsehood, and above all of treachery, virtues which filled us with an enthusiasm that blended an unrighteous cause with exalted feelings, and blinded us to the coarse criminality of our proceedings. Only remains to me now the sense of
