‘Unhappy inhabitants--wretched victims immolated to the caprice and madness of ambitious men greedy for your blood--return to your senses, open your eyes, consider the ills which surround you! With what tranquillity do your leaders look upon the graves crammed with your corpses! Are you not horror-struck at these cannibals, whose mirth bursts out in the midst of the human hecatomb, and who yet dare to lift their gory hands in prayer towards the throne of a God of Peace? They call themselves the apostles of Jesus Christ! Tremble, cruel and infamous men! The God who judges the actions of mortals is slow to condemn, but his vengeance is terrible.... I warn you for the last time, inhabitants of Gerona, reflect while you still may! If you force me to throw aside my usual mildness, your ruin is inevitable. I shall be the first to groan at it, but the laws of war impose on me the dire necessity.... I am severe but just. Unhappy Gerona! if thy defenders persist in their obstinacy, thou shalt perish in blood and flame. (Signed) AUGEREAU.’ Stuff of this sort was not likely to have much effect on fanatics like Alvarez and his ‘Crusaders.’ If it is so wrong to cause the deaths of men--they had only to answer--Why has Bonaparte sent his legions into Spain? On the Marshal’s line of argument, that it is wrong to resist overwhelming force, it is apparently a sin before God for any man to attempt to defend his house and family against any bandit. There is much odious and hypocritical nonsense in some of Napoleon’s bulletins, where he grows tender on the miseries of the people he has conquered, but nothing to approach the maunderings of his copyist. Augereau found the army about Gerona showing not more than 12,000 bayonets fit for the field--gunners and sappers excluded. The men were sick of the siege, and it would seem that the Marshal was forced, after inspecting the regiments and conferring with the generals, to acquiesce in St. Cyr’s decision that any further assaults would probably lead to more repulses. He gave out that he was resolved to change the system on which the operations had hitherto been conducted, but the change amounted to nothing more than that he ordered a slow but steady bombardment to be kept up, and occasionally vexed the Spaniards by demonstrations against the more exposed points of the wall. It does not appear that either of these expedients had the least effect in shaking the morale of the garrison. It is true that during October and November the hearts of the Geronese were commencing to grow sick, but this was solely the result of starvation and dwindling numbers. As to the bombardment, they were now hardened to any amount of dropping fire: on October 28 they celebrated the feast of San Narciso, their patron, by a procession all round the town, which was under fire for the whole time of its progress, and paid no attention to the casualties which it cost them.