2-995-729 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The War in Naples - Victor Emmanuel giving commands to commence the bombardment of Capua - from a sketch by our special artist, 1860. '...the King himself planted the red flag which was to serve as the signal for the commencement of the bombardment...At four o'clock the battery of Casa Bianca set the first shell flying. A quarter of an hour afterwards the walls of Capua were surrounded by a circle of white smoke...[He] looked at Capua through his eyeglass now and then, and I heard him remarking, "It is a pity that we have to do damage to so handsome a town"...As the daylight gradually disappeared and the darkness came on, the aspect of the murderous fight became still more imposing and terrible. Nothing was to be seen but the flashes of the guns and the luminous curves traced by the shells on the black sky. Nothing was to be heard but the roaring of the iron mouths and the terrible noise of the falling houses of the town. A strong north wind, form time to time, brought to my ear the loud screams of the unhappy inhabitants'. From "Illustrated London News", 1860.