[419] "Augustina Zaragoza, a handsome woman of the lower class, about twenty-two years of age, arrived at one of the batteries with refreshments at the time when not a man who defended it was left alive, so tremendous was the fire which the French kept up against it. For a moment the citizens hesitated to re-man the guns. Augustina sprung forward over the dead and dying, snatched a match from the hand of a dead artilleryman, and fired off a six-and-twenty pounder; then jumping upon the gun, made a solemn vow never to quit it alive during the siege."—Southey, vol. ii., p. 14.—Lord Byron states, that when he was at Seville, in 1809, the Maid of Zaragoza was seen walking daily on the Prado, decorated with medals, and orders, by command of the Junta. She has further had the honour of being painted by Wilkie.
"Such be the sons of Spain, and strange her fate
They fight for freedom who were never free;
A kingless people for a nerveless state,
Her vassals combat when their chieftains flee,
True to the veriest slaves of treachery:
Fond of a land which gave them nought but life,
Pride points the path that leads to liberty;
Back to the struggle, baffled in the strife,
War, war is still the cry, 'War even to the knife!'"
Childe Harold, c. i., st. 86.
[421] "Just before the day closed, Don Francisco Palafox, the general's brother, entered the city with a convoy of arms and ammunition, and reinforcement of three thousand men."—Southey, vol. ii., p. 26.
[422] "A hideous and revolting spectacle was exhibited during the action; the public hospital being taken and fired, the madmen confined there issued forth among the combatants, muttering, shouting, singing, and moping, according to the character of their disorder, while drivelling idiots mixed their unmeaning cries with the shouts of contending soldiers."—Napier, vol. i., p. 70.
[423] Southey's History of the Peninsular War, vol. i., p. 444.
[424] Mr. Whitbread. See Parliamentary Debates, vol. xi., pp. 886, 891. As a farther avowal of these sentiments, Mr. Whitbread addressed a letter, on the situation of Spain, to Lord Holland; "the subject," he said, "being peculiarly interesting to that distinguished nobleman, from the attachment he had formed to a people, the grandeur of whose character he had had the opportunity to estimate."
[425] At that time Secretary of State for foreign affairs.
[426] Southey, vol. i., p. 451.