Alcaniz is a reminder of another field of Spanish glory. It is the name of a town in Aragon, on the right bank of the Guadalupe, sixty miles south-east of Zaragoza. It was, on May twenty-third, 1809, the scene of the defeat of a French army under Suchet by the Spanish forces under General Blake. Tarragona street commemorates one of those sieges like that of Saragossa, which signalize the Spanish race above all others, for the tenacity and devotion with which in all ages it has defended its homes. The city of that name, situated on the Mediterranean shore of Spain, was besieged by Suchet, and defended by General Cortinas, from May 4, to June 29, 1811. The defense was conducted with the same fierce obstinacy and courage which marked that of Saragossa, and with even greater mortality, if allowance is made for the ravages of pestilence in the latter. But there was a vast difference in the finality of the two sieges. Tarragona was taken by assault; and never did American savages exercise more demon-like fury upon unresisting and powerless humanity than the French troops visited upon the Tarragonese. Above six thousand human beings comprising all ages, and both sexes, were massacred whilst appealing for mercy. “The blood of the Spaniards inundated the streets and the houses. Armed and unarmed, men and women, gray hairs and infant innocence, attractive youth and wrinkled age, were alike butchered by the infuriated troops.”[50] ----- Footnote 48: American State Papers, Public Lands, Vol. IV., p. 136. Footnote 49: Allison’s Modern Europe, Vol. III., p. 301. Footnote 50: Allison’s History of Modern Europe, Vol. III., p. 422. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XIX. Folch Leaves West Florida—His Successors—War of 1812—Tecumseh’s Visit to the Seminoles and Creeks—Consequences—Fort Mims—Percy and Nicholls’ Expedition. In October, 1809, Folch left Pensacola to fill the appointment of Governor of the country west of the Perdido, the capital of which was Mobile. The uneventful period, for Pensacola at least, between that year and 1813, was marked only by the incoming and outgoing of governors. Folch’s successor was his son-in-law, Don Francisco Maximiliano de Saint Maxent, under an _ad interim_ appointment. In July 1812, he was succeeded by Mauricio Zuniga, who in May, 1813, gave place to Mateo Gurzalez Maurique, whose administration covered the period of the war between the United States and Great Britain, which was declared by the former, on June 18, 1812.