The only reason for enlarging on this deplorable theme is that there was a close connexion in the minds of all soldiers of the early nineteenth century, from the highest to the lowest ranks, between the idea that an over-obstinate garrison had forfeited quarter, and the idea that the town they had defended was liable to sack. This may be found plainly stated in Lannes’s summons to Palafox at Saragossa in January 1809[277], in the capitulation-debate before the surrender of Badajoz in 1811, in Augereau’s address to the inhabitants of Gerona[278], in Leval’s summons to the governor of Tarifa[279], and with special emphasis in Suchet’s threatening epistle to Blake on the day before the fall of Valencia: ‘in a few hours a general assault will precipitate into your city the French columns: if you delay till this terrible moment, it will not be in my power to restrain the fury of the soldiery, and you alone will be responsible before God and man for the evils which will overwhelm Valencia. It is the desire to avert the complete destruction of a great town that determines me to offer you honourable terms of capitulation[280].’ It was hardly necessary in the Napoleonic era to enlarge on the connexion between storm and sack--it was presupposed. Every governor who capitulated used to put in his report to his own government a mention of his ‘desire to spare the unfortunate inhabitants the horrors of a storm.’ [277] See Belmas, ii. p. 381. [278] Ibid., ii. pp. 844-5. [279] Text in the _Defence of Tarifa_, p. 64, and in Arteche. [280] Belmas, iv. p. 202. This idea, sad to say, was as deeply rooted in the minds of British as of French soldiers. It is frankly confessed in many a Peninsular diary. ‘The men were permitted to enjoy themselves (!) for the remainder of the day,’ says Kincaid in his narrative of the fall of Badajoz, ‘and the usual frightful scene of plunder commenced, which officers thought it prudent to avoid for the moment by retiring to the camp[281].’ ‘The troops were, of course, admitted to the immemorial privilege of tearing the town to pieces,’ says another writer on another occasion[282]. The man in the ranks regarded the connexion of storm and sack as so close that he could write, ‘the prisoners being secured and the gates opened, we were allowed to enter the town _for the purpose of plundering it_[283].’ But perhaps the most eye-opening sentence on the subject is Wellington’s official order of April 7, 1812, issued late in the day, and when the sack had already been going on for fifteen or eighteen hours, ‘It is now full time that the plunder of Badajoz should cease; an officer and six steady non-commissioned officers will be sent from each regiment, British and Portuguese, of the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and Light Divisions into the town, at 5 a.m. to-morrow morning, to bring away any men still straggling there[284].’ [281] Kincaid, p. 39. [282] Leith Hay, ii. pp. 256-7. [283] Memoirs of Donaldson of the 94th, p. 158.