2. “The Commander of the Forces has ordered the provost-marshal into the town; he has orders to execute any men he may find in the act of plunder after he shall arrive there.”
“G. O.
“Camp before Badajoz, 8th April 1812.
3. “The Commander of the Forces is sorry to learn, that the brigade in Badajoz, instead of being a protection to the people, plunder them more than those who stormed the town.
6. “The Commander of the Forces calls upon the staff-officers of the army, and the commanding and other officers of regiments, to assist him in putting an end to the disgraceful scenes of drunkenness and plunder, which are going on in Badajoz.”
“G. O.
“Fuente Guinaldo, 10th June 1812.
7. “The Commander of the Forces is sorry to observe, that the outrages so frequently committed by soldiers when absent from their regiments, and the disgraceful scenes which have occurred upon the storming of Badajoz, have had the effect of rendering the people of the country enemies instead of friends to the army.”
[173] “On entering the cathedral I saw three British soldiers literally drowned in brandy. A spacious vault had been converted into a spirit depôt for the garrison; the casks had been perforated by musket-balls, and their contents escaping, formed a pool of some depth. These men becoming intoxicated, had fallen head foremost into the liquor, and were suffocated as I found them.”—Table Talk of a Campaigner.
[174] “At the period of the re-capture of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz, Buonaparte stood on the pinnacle of fame and power: his empire stretched from the Elbe to the Pyrenees, and from the shores of the northern to those of the Adriatic Sea: whilst throughout all continental Europe his military supremacy was admitted and feared. As proof of the latter assertion, it need only be recalled to memory, that the various arbitrary decrees which, in the arrogance of uncontrolled authority, he from time to time issued, to cramp and confine the industry of the world, were obeyed without a hostile movement. The powerful and the weak equally yielded them a full though reluctant compliance: even Russia, doubly secured against his interference by her immense extent and distant situation, deemed it prudent to submit; till at length the prosperity of her empire being threatened by a long adhesion, she endeavoured, by friendly representations, to obtain an exemption. These failing in effect, the discussion had, at this time, assumed the character of angry remonstrance, the usual precursor of war; but, as a long series of overbearing conduct and insulting replies had failed to drive her into open resistance, it cannot be doubted that it depended on Buonaparte, by conciliatory and friendly attention, to preserve her as an ally. No external interference, or the apprehension of it, therefore, existed, to divert his attention from the affairs of Spain; and the impartial historian, of whatever country he may be, is bound to record, that those brilliant triumphs over the French armies were obtained by the Portuguese and British, when Buonaparte was in amity with all the rest of the world, and his military empire in the zenith of its strength and glory.”—Jones’s Account of the War.
[175] The numbers, French and English, were about two thousand sabres each.
[176] Marshal Beresford disbanded these regiments for their cowardice, and had a few of the runaways tried and executed at Coimbra.