Hansen's Children. Ognjen Spahic

of the sixteenth century. When a group of colonists brutally raped three under-aged girls (tales speak of them being butchered and eaten at the bacchanalias held that same evening) the city fathers, with the pope’s blessing, gathered two hundred heavily armed mercenaries: a force intended to expel this perverted rabble and exact bloody punishment. A battle ensued, and blood-curdling cries were heard until the early hours.

      When the curious and vindictive inhabitants of Sensotregiore looked out at the battlefield in the morning light, they were horrified to see a well-ordered army of lepers holding up the heads of their enemies. Now the maddened horde yelled in fury as it converged on the city’s fragile gates. Within two hours Sensotregiore had become a Sodom at the mercy of the hungry and disfigured. The humiliated ones now indulged in all the worldly pleasures that had been denied them for years and gave their brutal impulses free rein. A frenzy of rape, plunder, loathsome orgies and cruel murders descended on the city, turning it into a hellhole. The inhabitants, mad with fear of the disease, fled towards the northern gates and out into the hills.