Order is shattered in a strange guttural tone that resounded
among the walls of the houses, which seemed dead and deserted.
Behind the closed shutters, eyes watched the conquerors, who,
by right of war, were not masters of the city and of the lives
and fortunes of its people.
In their darkened ruins the inhabitants have given way to the
same feeling of panic which is aroused by the natural cataclysmns.
Their wisdom and strength alike are of no avail for those
devastating upheavals of the earth.
Though the same feeling is experienced whenever the established order
of things is upset, when security ceases to exist. When all that
was previously protected by the laws of man and nature is suddenly
placed at the mercy of brutal unreasoning force. This feeling of
panic and confusion, this allowance of ourselves to become dazed
in the whirlwind of abusing senses that is in its own right invasion.
An earthquake buries a whole people beneath the ruins of
their houses. The river, over-flowed by the unforgiving rains which
seemed destined to never end, runs in spite; sweeping away the
bodies of drowned peasants together with the carcasses of
cattle and rafters forn from roofs. The victorious army; slaughtering
all who resist, making prisoners of the rest, looting by right of
the sword, and thanking their god to the sound of canon.