“Soon after entering the town a girl about nine years of age implored my protection, ‘por el amor de Dios,’ for her mother.
“A number of soldiers of a distinguished regiment were in the house, armed, and under the influence of every evil passion. Alas! I was powerless. I met a man of the 88th dragging a peasant by the neck, with the intention of putting him to death—so he declared—in atonement for his not having any money in his pockets! I appealed to the gallantry of his corps, and saved the life of his victim.”
The town had now become a scene of plunder and devastation. Our soldiers and our women, in a state of intoxication, had lost all control over themselves. These, together with numbers of Spaniards and Portuguese, who had come into the city in search of plunder, filled every street. Many were dispossessed of their booty by others, and these interchanges of plunder in many cases were not effected without bloodshed. Our soldiers had taken possession of the shops, stationed themselves behind the counters, and were selling the goods contained in them. These were, again, displaced by more numerous parties, who became shopkeepers in their turn, and thus continual scuffling and bloodshed was going on.
In addition to the incessant firing through the keyholes of the front doors of houses as the readiest way of forcing the locks, a desultory and wanton discharge of musketry was kept up in the streets, placing all who passed literally between cross-fires. Many of our own people were thus killed or wounded by their own comrades.
An attempt was made next day to collect our soldiers. The troops, however, that were sent into the town for that purpose joined in the work of plunder.
We may feel shocked at the excesses which our soldiers committed after the storming of such towns as Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos. Folk sitting by their quiet firesides may wonder how sane men can be so dead to the higher and better feelings of humanity; but when the fever of war is followed by the poison of drink, it is no wonder if the minds of rude men are thrown off their balance. War is a most awful thing to witness, and many officers have declared to the writer that, had they known what war meant in all its dreadful reality, they would not have been so eager in their youth to join the army. All the more reason is there that every youth in our islands should be compelled by law to learn the use of the rifle, that when the time comes—as come it will—when an invader shall set foot upon our shore, we may not be helpless and unarmed. Perhaps it is necessary that we should sometimes hear the horrid truth about war; we may thus be stimulated to use a little self-denial for our country’s security, when we realize that life is not made up of games and money-making, and when we can see what our fatherland would be to us, devastated by a savage enemy, with farms and barns blazing, women and children starved to death, towns sacked and plundered, and the honour of old England trodden beneath the foot of a foreign invader. The story of these sieges has many lessons—military, ethical, and economic. Let us at least learn one—the duty that is incumbent upon all of us, men and boys, to defend mother and wife and child.
[CHAPTER VI]
A PRISONER IN ST. SEBASTIAN (1813)
The coup de grâce—The hospital—A cruel order—An attempt at escape—Removed to the castle—The English at the breach—Many are wounded—French ladies sleep in the open—A vertical fire—English gunners shoot too well—A good sabre lightly won.