Retreat of the French.
The retreat of the French was conducted with the firmness and admirable discipline characteristic of French soldiers. As the troops slowly and sullenly retired toward the French frontier, pressed by superior numbers, they turned occasionally upon their pursuers, and the advance-guard of the foe encountered several very bloody repulses.
San Sebastian.
We have not space to allude to these various conflicts, which only checked for a moment the onrolling tide of the victorious allied army. Wellington's troops took the town of San Sebastian by storm. This was a beautiful Spanish city, through which the French retreated, and where they made a short and desperate stand. We will leave it to Mr. Alison to describe the conduct of Lord Wellington's troops.
Excesses of the British Troops.
"And now commenced," writes Alison, "a scene which has affixed as lasting a stain on the character of the English and Portuguese troops, as the heroic valor they displayed in the assault has given them enduring and exalted fame. The long endurance of the assault had wrought the soldiers up to perfect madness. The soldiers wreaked their vengeance with fearful violence on the unhappy inhabitants. Some of the houses adjoining the breaches had taken fire from the effects of the explosion. The flames, fanned by an awful tempest which burst on the town, soon spread with frightful rapidity. The wretched inhabitants, driven from house to house as the conflagration devoured their dwellings, were soon huddled together in one quarter, where they fell a prey to the unbridled passions of the soldiery.
"Attempts were at first made by the British officers to extinguish the flames, but they proved vain among the general confusion which prevailed. The soldiers broke into the burning houses, pillaged them of the most valuable articles they contained, and rolling numerous casks of spirits into the streets, with frantic shouts, emptied them of their contents, till vast numbers of them sank down like savages, motionless, some lifeless, from the excess.
"Carpets, tapestry, beds, silks and satins, wearing apparel, jewelry, watches, and every thing valuable, were scattered about upon the bloody pavements, while fresh bundles of them were thrown from the windows above to avoid the flames, and caught with demoniac yells by the drunken crowds beneath. Amidst these scenes of disgraceful violence and unutterable woe, nine-tenths of the once happy, smiling town of St. Sebastian were reduced to ashes. And what has affixed a yet darker blot on the character of the victors, deeds of violence and cruelty were perpetrated hitherto rare in the British army, and which causes the historian to blush, not merely for his country, but for his species."
The account which is given by Spanish historians of these transactions is even far more dreadful than the above; so revolting that we can not pain our readers by transcribing it upon these pages. A document issued by the Constitutional Junta, after describing crimes as awful as even fiends could commit, adds:
Destruction of St. Sebastian.