One was able to get a graphic picture of the horrors of that outbreak from the reminiscences which Señor Garcia used to give, for it made an impression on his childhood which remained undimmed throughout the successive years of his life. Indeed, it was more than ninety years later that I recall his speaking of these scenes one afternoon when the ill-starred war, which his beloved country was at the time carrying on against the United States, brought to his mind the memory of that other war nearly a century before. "During the weeks which succeeded Joseph Bonaparte's assumption of the Spanish throne," he said, "there arose great bitterness between the peasants and the invaders. Daily, when the roll-call was read, a number of French soldiers failed to answer to their names: during the preceding night the unhappy men would have been murdered in their beds by the inmates of the houses in which they had been quartered in the surrounding villages." The French exacted terrible reprisals for this, and he vividly recalled the long line of men, youths, and even boys who were forced to run the gauntlet between the rows of soldiers on their way to wholesale execution. "Shoot every one old enough to hold a gun." So ran the cruel order, given out day after day to the soldiers in many districts. On the 2nd of May a wholesale massacre of the French took place in Madrid, and the survivors were driven out of the town by the mob. In consequence of this, Murat was forced to retire with his soldiers beyond the Ebro, while the province of Asturias rose _en masse_. But mobs and undisciplined militia can never stand against regular troops. The Spanish army was defeated, and on the 20th of July young Garcia witnessed the entrance of Joseph Bonaparte into the capital as King of Spain. That same day, however, brought serious disaster to one of the flying columns which had been sent out in various directions. The Spanish insurgents at once rose in every quarter, and a guerilla warfare was begun which proved more fatal to the French army than regular defeats would have been. Napoleon for the first time had to fight a nation in arms, and Joseph Bonaparte was forced to evacuate Madrid within three weeks of making his royal entry, and to retreat beyond the Ebro, as Murat had done two months before. Here he was joined by his brother-in-law with 135,000 men, and a rapid advance was made on Madrid, with the inevitable result that the Spanish capital was forced to capitulate, and on December 13 the young Manuel had the excitement of seeing the entry of the great Napoleon into the town at the head of the French troops. The events of the next three years of the Peninsular War were not witnessed by him, for the place remained in the hands of the French until 1812, when he saw Madrid evacuated by Bonaparte, and occupied on August 12 by Wellington and his troops after the battle of Salamanca.