With such sights the heart of Wallace had been pierced, when he passed
through the lowland counties of his country; nay, as he scoured the
highland districts of the Grampians, even there had he met the foot of
barbarian man, and cruel desolation. For thus it was that the Southron
garrisons had provisional themselves; by robbing the poor of their
bread; and, when they resisted, firing their dwellings, and punishing
the refractory with death.
But not so the generous enmity of Sir William Wallace. His commission
was, not to destroy, but to save; and though he carried his victorious
army to feed on the Southron plains, and sent the harvests of England
to restore the wasted fields of Scotland, yet he did no more. No fire
blasted his path; no innocent blood cried against him from the ground!
When the impetuous zeal of his soldiers, flushed with victory, and in
the heat of vengeance, would have laid several hamlets in ashes, he
seized the brand from the destroying party, and throwing it into an
adjoining brook: "Show yourselves worthy the advantages you have
gained," cried he, "by the moderation with which you use them.
Consider yourselves as the soldiers of the all powerful God, who alone
has conducted you to victory; for, with a few, has he not enabled us to
subdue a host? Behave as becomes your high destiny; and debase not
yourselves by imitating the hirelings of ambition, who receive, as the
wages of their valor, the base privilege to ravage and to murder.
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