CHAPTER XLI.
(CONTINUED.)
GUERRILLAS, AND THEIR EXPLOITS. SIR ROWLAND HILL’S SUCCESS AT ALMARAZ. BATTLE OF SALAMANCA.
♦May, 1812. Duran enters Soria.♦
At this time, when nothing could be expected from the Spanish armies, the Guerrillas acted in larger bodies than before, and engaged in more difficult enterprises than they had yet undertaken. Duran having obtained a plan of the fortifications of Soria from an architect who resided there, resolved upon attacking that city as an important post, from whence the French commanded a considerable extent of country. Soria, which stands on the Douro, near the supposed site of Numantia, and contained about 1,100 families in the middle of the last century, is surrounded by an old wall eighteen feet in height and six in thickness, to which some works adapted to a more modern art of war had been added; the suburb also had been fortified, and the castle strengthened. He approached the city by a circuitous route (during a most tempestuous night of wind ♦March 18.♦ and snow, which froze as it fell,) and reaching it at daybreak scaled the walls, forced the suburb, and obtained possession of the city. The enemy retired into the castle, and Duran prepared to besiege it, setting fire to four convents to clear the way for his operations.
The adventurers had arrived in fortunate time, for the morrow was St. Joseph’s day, when a ball and supper were to have been given in honour of the Intruder for his name’s sake, and the delicacies which had been prepared for this occasion served to regale these unexpected and unwelcome visiters. Battering-rams were employed with great effect against the old walls, that the city might no longer afford protection to the French; the public money was seized, great quantities of grain and biscuit dispatched by all the means of transport which could be found, and a contribution levied upon the inhabitants, for hitherto they had contributed nothing to the national troops, being under the yoke of the French, and thinking it evil enough to pay what the invaders exacted; but the Guerrillas admitted of no such excuse: they supposed the people to be rich because it was a trading city, and many who had formerly been rich proprietors dwelt there; the contribution, therefore, was not likely to be lightly imposed. Duran enrolled also such men as he thought fit for service, ordered others who might have been serviceable to the enemy to leave the city, and retreated himself without loss, when a detachment arrived from Aranda to the succour of the garrison.
♦Members of the Junta of Burgos seized by the French and put to death. March 21.♦
This enterprise led to a tragedy characteristic of the spirit in which the war was carried on on both sides. The French, who had come in time to save the castle of Soria, obtained intelligence that the Junta of Burgos were in a village called Grado; and there, under the guidance of a Spanish traitor, Moreno by name, a party of 450 horse, making a march of fourteen leagues in less than four-and-twenty hours, surprised them early in the morning. Some twenty soldiers with their commander were found fast asleep, and made prisoners, as were three members of the Junta and the secretary of the Intendency: but more persons escaped than were taken, though the enemy set every house on fire, with the intention of burning those who might have hidden themselves. As soon as the news was known, Duran and the Junta of Soria sent to the French commander in that city, reminding him that the prisoners taken there had been treated with humanity, and threatening reprisals if the persons who had now been captured should be put to death. This was of no avail. The vice-president of the Junta, D. Pedro Gordo, who was the parochial priest of Santibañez, was inhumanly scourged by Moreno, ... perhaps from some impulse of private enmity: the prisoners were then conducted to Aranda, from whence the soldiers contrived to effect their escape. Navas, the secretary of Gordo, and the two other members of the Junta, D. Jose Ortiz de Covarrubios, and D. Eulogio Jose de Muro, with a young lad, son of the former, were sent in irons to Soria, there to be tried by the criminal Junta of that ♦April 2.♦ city. The trial, which took place during the night, occupied five hours, all the formalities of justice being observed; and the boy, whom because of his youth it would have been monstrous to condemn, was acquitted: the other four were sentenced to death, and four priests were ordered immediately to attend them; but no more time was allowed than was necessary for bringing together and forming the soldiers who were to conduct them to the place of execution.
The different behaviour of the sufferers was such as deeply to affect the spectators. Ortiz was greatly moved at the thought of leaving his son fatherless and destitute;
♦Circumstances of the execution.♦ but overcoming that emotion with a Spaniard’s feeling, he commended the boy to God as the orphan’s Father, and called upon the Lord to receive his soul as a victim for his religion and his country. The priest held a crucifix in one hand as he went to execution, and beat his breast incessantly with the other; and while tears of ardent devotion streamed down his cheeks, implored with a loud voice forgiveness for his own sins and for those of the people. Muro, who was a much younger man than either, was of a weak constitution, still further weakened by the fatigues he had undergone in the performance of his duties; so that what with ill treatment, and what he had suffered during twelve days’ imprisonment, there seemed to be an entire prostration of his strength; faintings and cold sweats succeeded each other, and it was thought he would expire before he could reach the place where he was to be put to death. He had asked earnestly for a crucifix; the priest who attended him not knowing for what service he had been summoned had improvidently left his house without one; he gave him therefore in its stead a rosary, with a medal attached to it, on which was the image of Our Lady of the Pillar. Muro had studied in the university of Zaragoza, where it is said he had never omitted, for a single day, to visit and adore the tutelary idol of that city; and this trifling circumstance, which at any other time would have appeared to him light as air, acted upon him now in a manner that might seem miraculous or incredible to those who cannot comprehend the force of imagination and the strength of a believing mind; for no sooner had he seen what image the medal bore, than, as if by an influx of divine support, he put off all weakness and proceeded to the place of death with a firm step and a cheerful countenance, and ejaculations of jubilant devotion. When they came to the foot of the hill on the top of which they were to suffer, “Up, brothers!” he exclaimed, “up! let us ascend this our Mount Calvary, where it is vouchsafed to us that we should imitate our Redeemer! I pray and trust that this hour our offences shall be blotted out by virtue of the blood which on his holy Calvary he shed for our sins.” In this spirit he knelt down upon the fatal spot, raised his eyes to heaven, and presented his breast to the soldiers. The Spaniards compared the circumstances of this man’s death with what the French themselves had related of Marshal Lasnes, how after he had received his mortal wound, a visit from Buonaparte comforted and for a while revived him: “Let patron,” said they, “be compared with patron, client with client, and cause with cause!”
♦Treatment of their bodies.♦