This order Marmont, after reproaching his troops for like excesses, renewed with the following additions.
“Considering that the disorders of the army have arrived at the highest degree, and require the most vigorous measures of repression, it is ordered,
“1º. All non-commissioned officers and soldiers found a quarter of a league from their quarters, camp, or post without leave, shall be judged pillagers and tried by the military commission.
“2º. The gens-d’armes shall examine the baggage of all sutlers and followers and shall seize all effects that appear to be pillaged, and shall burn what will burn, and bring the gold and silver to the paymaster-general under a ‘procès verbal,’ and all persons whose effects have been seized as pillage to the amount of one hundred livres shall be sent to the military commission, and on conviction suffer death.
“3º. All officers who shall not take proper measures to repress disorders under their command shall be sent in arrest to head-quarters there to be judged.”
Then appointing the number of baggage animals to each company, upon a scale which coincides in a remarkable manner with the allowances in the British army, Marmont directed the overplus to be seized and delivered, under a legal process, to the nearest villages, ordering the provost-general to look to the execution each day, and report thereon. Finally, he clothed the provost-general with all the powers of the military commissions; and proof was soon given that his orders were not mere threats, for two captains were arrested for trial, and a soldier of the twenty-sixth regiment was condemned to death by one of the provisional commissions for stealing church vessels.
Such was the conduct of the French, and touching the conduct of the English, lord Wellington, in the same month, wrote thus to lord Liverpool.
“The outrages committed by the British soldiers, belonging to this army, have become so enormous, and they have produced an effect on the minds of the people of the country, so injurious to the cause, and likely to be so dangerous to the army itself, that I request your Lordship’s early attention to the subject. I am sensible that the best measures to be adopted on this subject are those of prevention, and I believe there are few officers who have paid more attention to the subject than I have done, and I have been so far successful, as that few outrages are committed by the soldiers who are with their regiments, after the regiments have been a short time in this country.”