nding to defy the national guards, who seemed to
spring from the ground without, they were in reality awestricken
before the wrath of the armed citizens within. A quick burst of
Spanish anger, a sharp stab of the Spanish poniard--the frequency of
such incidents began to create a panic among the French boy-soldiers.
The seizure and sack of a city had for years been a traditional
amusement of the grand army, connected in Italy and Germany with
little or no loss of life, and enhanced by the acquisition of enormous
booty. The young conscripts, who had heard the oft-told tale from
their fathers' lips, found to their bitter disappointment that in
Spain a sack meant much bloodshed and little, if any, booty. Sometimes
the tables were more than turned. A French squadron put in at Cadiz to
cooeperate with a force despatched by Napoleon, under pretense of
resisting an invasion threatened by the English, but really for the
purpose of terrorizing southern Spain. The arrival of the troops
having been delayed by the outbreak of rebellion farther north, the
townsfolk of that ancient city rose and seized the fleet. The corpses
of French soldiers, wherever found throughout the country, were
mutilated by the furious Spaniards, and the wounded received no
quarter.

At the end of May, Murat was in Madrid as commander-in-chief, with
Moncey as his lieutenant; he had thirty thousand troops. Junot was in
Portugal with twenty-five thousand. Bessieres had twenty-five thousand
more, half in Old Castile under himself, half in Aragon under Verdier.
Duhesme commanded the thirteen thousand who were in Catalonia; Dupont
stood on the Tagus near Toledo with twenty-four thousand more. In the
first weeks of June four different skirmishes occurred between the
French regulars and the insurgents in different parts of the country.
Verdier at Logrono on the sixth, Frere in Segovia on the seventh,
Lefebvre at Tudela on the eighth, and Lasalle near Valladolid on the
twelfth, had all dispersed the hordes opposed to them. By the middle
of the month a regular advance was ordered. It took the form of
dispersion for the sake of complete occupation. While Lefebvre laid
siege to Saragossa, Moncey started for Valencia with ten thousand
soldiers, Dupont for Andalusia with nine thousand, and Bessieres's
division was distributed throughout Castile up to the walls of
Santander, which closed its gates and prepared for resistance. Owing
to the defiant attitude and desperate c