n exaggerated by
popular animosity, religious zeal, and extravagant declamation. War, in
its fairest form, implies a perpetual violation of humanity and justice;
and the hostilities of Barbarians are inflamed by the fierce and lawless
spirit which incessantly disturbs their peaceful and domestic society.
The Vandals, where they found resistance, seldom gave quarter; and the
deaths of their valiant countrymen were expiated by the ruin of the
cities under whose walls they had fallen. Careless of the distinctions
of age, or sex, or rank, they employed every species of indignity and
torture, to force from the captives a discovery of their hidden wealth.
The stern policy of Genseric justified his frequent examples of military
execution: he was not always the master of his own passions, or of
those of his followers; and the calamities of war were aggravated by the
licentiousness of the Moors, and the fanaticism of the Donatists. Yet
I shall not easily be persuaded, that it was the common practice of the
Vandals to extirpate the olives, and other fruit trees, of a country
where they intended to settle: nor can I believe that it was a usual
stratagem to slaughter great numbers of their prisoners before the
walls of a besieged city, for the sole purpose of infecting the air,
and producing a pestilence, of which they themselves must have been the
first victims. [25]

[Footnote 25: The original complaints of the desolation of Africa are
contained 1. In a letter from Capreolus, bishop of Carthage, to excuse
his absence from the council of Ephesus, (ap. Ruinart, p. 427.) 2. In
the life of St. Augustin, by his friend and colleague Possidius, (ap.
Ruinart, p. 427.) 3. In the history of the Vandalic persecution, by
Victor Vitensis, (l. i. c. 1, 2, 3, edit. Ruinart.) The last picture,
which was drawn sixty years after the event, is more expressive of the
author's passions than of the truth of facts.]

The generous mind of Count Boniface was tortured by the exquisite
distress of beholding the ruin which he had occasioned, and whose rapid
progress he was unable to check. After the loss of a battle he retired
into Hippo Regius; where he was immediately besieged by an enemy, who
considered him as the real bulwark of Africa. The maritime colony of
Hippo, [26] about two hundred miles westward of Carthage, had formerly
acquired the distinguishing epithet of Regius, from the residence of
Numidian kings; and some remains of trade and populousne