Palafox remained a prisoner in France until 1814, when he returned to Spain. He was afterwards created Duke of Zaragoza, and died in 1847. Of this siege a British historian has said: “Modern Europe has not such a memorable siege to recount; and to the end of the world, even after Spain and France have sunk before the waves of time, and all the glories of modern Europe have passed away, it will stand forth in undecaying lustre; a monument of heroic devotion, which will thrill the hearts of the brave and generous throughout every succeeding age.”[49] Baylen, a parallel street with Palafox, next invites notice. Baylen is a small town at the foot of the Sierra Morena, on the road leading from Cadiz to Cordova and Seville. There, on July nineteenth, 1808, the French General Dupont, after his recent plunder of Cordova, with excesses more in keeping with the days of Alaric, than the nineteenth century, was, with 20,000 men, and all their plunder, compelled to surrender, after a series of battles to a Spanish army, largely made up of irregular Spanish troops. To Reding, a Swiss in the service of Spain, was due the glory of the event, which excited profound attention throughout Europe, and made a deep and sinister impression on the French. Of the “catastrophe” Napoleon, who was at Bordeaux when he heard of it, said: “That an army should be beaten, is nothing; it is the daily fate of war and is easily repaired; but that an army should submit to a dishonorable capitulation is a stain upon the glory of our arms which can never be effaced. Wounds inflicted on honor are incurable. The moral effect of this catastrophe will be terrible.” Baylen was doubtless the first link in the chain of events which drew from him the reflection in which he indulged at St. Helena: “It was that unhappy war in Spain which ruined me.” Romana street bears the name of the most illustrious General Spain produced during her great Peninsula war—the Marquis de Romana. He was one of those great and generous characters who are too great and generous to be moved by selfishness or envy, and was in consequence the bond of union between the English and Spanish armies. He was marching to the relief of Badajoz, when he was seized with heart disease at Cartaxo, where he died suddenly January 22, 1811. It is enough for his fame for him to have been the subject of the following dispatch by the Duke of Wellington: “In the Marquis de Romana, the Spanish army has lost its brightest ornament, his country its most upright patriot, and the world the most strenuous and zealous defender in the cause in which we are engaged; and I shall always acknowledge with gratitude the assistance which I received from him, as well by his operation, as by his counsel, since he has been joined with the army.”