A number of French soldiers had been sent to the hospital at the Caldas, a munificent establishment of royal charity, to be cured of the itch by the baths at that place. They complained to General Thomiers, who commanded at Peniche, that the peasantry insulted them; and Thomiers sent a few stout grenadiers to take the first opportunity of resenting any mockery which might be offered to their comrades. These men paraded the streets, and drank at the wine-houses till they began to invite a quarrel. A countryman, heated like them with liquor, said to his companion as they were passing, I have killed seven of these fellows myself. The vaunt, which was probably as false as it was foolish, might have cost him his life in a regular way; but one of the French, who heard him, immediately attempted to cut him down; ... he ran to his mother’s house, which was close at hand, and calling out to his sister to help him, she stood in the door-way, let him enter, and instantly locking the door on the outside, put the key in her bosom. The French endeavoured to force the key from her; the woman was strong and determined: her cries were heard at a billiard table near, where a cadet of the regiment of Pato, which was quartered in the town, seeing a woman struggling upon the dunghill with three or four French soldiers, jumped out of the window, and ran to her assistance; the surgeon and a few others of the same regiment followed. A French captain also came up: by this time a considerable crowd had collected; the sword was knocked out of his hand by a stone, and he would have been in some danger, if a Portugueze sergeant had not called out to the mob to forbear, for he was a French officer. The soldiers now came up, and the tumult ended with no other immediate evil than that one or two of the first aggressors were slightly wounded: ... the woman was the greatest sufferer; for one of them, with the pummel of his sword, had beaten her cruelly upon the bosom. When the circumstances were made known to Thomiers, his first intention was to pass it over lightly: as the _Juiz de Fora_ of the town happened to be with him at the time, he desired him immediately to send him any four fellows of bad character, to whom a little punishment would do no harm, and who might represent the town on this occasion. Such an arrangement, curious as it is, would have been an improvement upon the ordinary course of Portugueze justice. Four men, accordingly, against whom complaints had been recently preferred by their wives, but who were entirely innocent of the matter in question, were arrested, and put in confinement. Nine days afterward, Loison, who commanded in the district, appeared at the head of three or four thousand men, bringing Thomiers with him. The woman was called upon to declare which of the soldiers had beaten her: she pointed out the man, and there ended this part of the inquiry: but on the other part, fifteen Portugueze were condemned to death;