The second article of Blake’s capitulation, already cited above, had granted a complete amnesty for past actions on the part of the Valencians--‘Il ne sera fait aucune recherche pour le passé contre ceux qui auraient pris une part active à la guerre ou à la révolution,’ to quote the exact term. In his dispatch of January 12 to Berthier, Suchet is shameless enough to write: ‘I have disarmed the local militia: all guilty chiefs will be arrested, and all assassins punished; _for in consenting to Article II of the Capitulation my only aim was to get the matter over quickly_[63].’ ‘Guilty chiefs’ turned out to mean all civilians who had taken a prominent part in the defence of Valencia: ‘assassins’ was interpreted to cover guerrilleros of all sorts, not (as might perhaps have been expected) merely those persons who had taken part in the bloody riots against the French commercial community in 1808[64]. In his second dispatch of January 17 Suchet proceeds to explain that he has arrested 480 persons as ‘suspects,’ that a large number of guerrillero leaders have been found among them, who have been sent to the citadel and have been already shot, or will be in a few days. He has also arrested every monk in Valencia; 500 have been sent prisoners to France: five of the most guilty, convicted of having carried round the streets a so-called ‘banner of the faith,’ and of having preached against capitulation, and excited the people to resistance, have been already executed. Inquiries were still in progress. They resulted in the shooting of two more friars[65]. But the most astonishing clause in the dispatch is that ‘all those who took part in the murders of the French [in 1808] will be sought out and punished. Already _six hundred_ have been executed by the firmness of the Spanish judge Marescot, whom I am expecting soon to meet[66].’ It was a trifling addition to the catalogue of Suchet’s doings that 350 students of the university, who had volunteered to aid the regular artillery during the late siege, had all been arrested and sent off to France like the monks. Two hundred sick or footsore prisoners who straggled from the marching column directed on Teruel and Saragossa are said to have been shot by the wayside[67]. It is probable that innumerable prisoners were put to death in cold blood after the capitulation of Valencia, in spite of Suchet’s guarantee that ‘no research should be made as to the past.’ Of this Napier says no word[68], though he quotes other parts of Suchet’s dispatches, and praises him for his ‘vigorous and prudent’ conduct, and his ‘care not to offend the citizens by violating their customs or shocking their religious feelings.’ [63] See the dispatches printed in full in Belmas, Appendix, vol. iv, pp. 218-20, and 226-7 of his great work. [64] For which see vol. i. p. 68. [65] The names of all seven friars are given by Toreno and Schepeler. [66] Can the frightful figure of 600 be a mistake for 60?