The siege of St. Sebastian

The fort is in Spain and is held by the French. The British stormed the city after a siege lasting 60 days. There was considerable death on both sides. There were several convents also in this small town. What is clearly seen from the text is the way the British soldiers behaved once they took over the city. I will quote some of it, as the very old pages are not very clear.

"The troops it may be added when they broke into the town, got completely out of hand; and as shadow which blackened the fame of the splendid and obstinate valour by which the breaches were carried is cast by the scenes of cruelty and license which followed the assault. The men who swept the streets of the unhappy city as that night fell were drunk with the long madness of the fight; Graham had no fresh troops at hand which he could march into the town to enforce order.

Frazer, it may be added, gives a realistic picture of the town as seen after the attack: "I have been in the town, and over that part of it the flames or the enemy will permit to be visited. The scene is dreadful; no words can convey half the horrors which strike the eye at every step. Heaps of dead in every corner; English, French and Portuguese lying wounded on each other; with such resolution did one side attack and the other defend. The town is not plundered, it is sacked. Rapine has done her work, nothing is left. I had occasion, in going to General Hay, to go into several houses; some had been elegantly furnished all was ruin, rich hangings, women's apparel, children's clothes all scattered in utter confusion, the very few inhabitants I saw said nothing.The westerners who are preaching to us today must be thinking that we do not know their History. Our soldiers are like their Florence Nightingale during the First World War. Tears come to the eyes of human beings when we see our male and female soldiers carry old men and women and children to safety, feed them and medicate them with the meagre funds available to a poor Third World Country. I hope the Westerners who fostered this 30 year war by supporting a Terrorist as ruthless as Prabhakaran will at least now realise what they have been doing to a poor country whose resources they have plundered for almost 500 years.

The best they can do is not comment on our humanitarian effort to free the island and world from terrorism, but send their combatants for training on humanitarian ideas.

It is a pity that the West is short of leaders like Sir Winston Churchill who alone stood up to a dictator like Hitler amidst all odds. Prabhakaran is much worse than Hitler.

Prof. P.A. De Silva