Ut ora vertat huc et huc euntium
Liberrima indignatio?
“Arat Falerni mille fundi jugera,
“Et Appiam mannis terit;
“Sedilibusque magnus in primis eques,
“Othone contempto, sedet!”
Epod. iv.
Menas, Pompey’s freedman, and Augustus’s Tribune, a double and impartial traitor, to whom this ode was addressed, was the Godoy of ancient Rome.
The Massacre of Madrid on the memorable Second of May did not happily involve so much bloodshed as for a long period had been imagined. The exaggeration common to all countries in commemorating their patriotic struggles, and especially so in the Peninsula, had fully quadrupled the number of martyrs who fell upon that occasion. Recent minute inquiries have confirmed the statement of Napier that the entire number of the Madrid population slain in this massacre did not exceed 200. The real name of the “Daïz” in the text was Daoiz. The shootings subsequent to the street massacre took place, as I have recorded them, under circumstances which in Spain were necessarily regarded as of excessive atrocity, the denial of the assistance of clergy, which by Frenchmen was lightly considered, being in Spanish eyes the acmé of horrors. The supposed miraculous appearances in the Northern provinces are derived from Foy’s History.
For the circumstances of the rising which followed throughout Spain the reader is referred to Napier and to Southey, whose description of the Siege of Zaragoza I have followed because it is the more poetical, although I cannot refrain from remarking that it is disfigured by occasional passages of exaggeration and bombast not altogether worthy of an historical work.