[612] History of the Peninsular War, iii. p. 186.
[613] His troops had plundered the Portuguese peasantry freely during their rapid march, and actually came to skirmishing with the local Ordenança. For anecdotes by an eye-witness, Schepeler, see his book, i. p. 304.
[614] For which see Schepeler, p. 307. On a false alarm the troops began to embark on the transports without orders, and in great disarray. Blake, according to Schepeler, made a ridiculous spectacle of himself, by wading a long way through shallow water to get out to a small boat. There were no French within many miles.
[615] See table of the Army of Murcia (3rd Army) on June 1st, in [Appendix XVII].
[616] See vol. iii. pp. 4 and 104.
[617] The Marquis had only taken over charge of Valencia from Charles O’Donnell a few weeks before.
[618] This provisional division of 9th Corps troops (see [p. 445]) had already sent off some of its battalions to join Victor before Cadiz, since the units belonged to the 1st Corps.
[619] There is a good account of this obscure campaign by Schepeler, an eye-witness, in his Spanische Monarchie, pp. 558-62, and a longer one in Arteche, vol. x.
[620] Schepeler (p. 460) mentions that during his short halt on the frontier of Murcia, Soult court-martialled and shot a French émigré officer in the Spanish service captured on the 9th—Charles Cléry, the son of the faithful servant of Louis XVI, who was so long with his master in the Temple prison. As he had been out of France for many years, first in the Austrian and then in the Spanish army, this was a cruel stretch of the idea of treason.
[621] See above, [page 243].