There were many French residents in Valencia; the abominable conduct of their government toward Spain had made them objects of hatred as well as suspicion; and at the beginning of the disturbances most of them very imprudently took refuge in the citadel. Calvo denounced them to the mob as being in correspondence with Murat and the French troops, for the purpose of betraying the city. The Junta had no military force at their command; and they were too much confused or intimidated to employ that moral force which, with due exertions on the part of the magistracy, may generally be brought into action. The British consul, Mr. Tupper, was one of their number; he went to the citadel, represented to the French the imminent danger to which they were exposed while they remained there collected as it were for slaughter, and intreated them to retire into the different convents, and name such of the inhabitants as they supposed would be willing and able to associate for their protection. But thinking themselves safer where they were, they would not be persuaded. By this time the Canon had collected instruments enough for his bloody purpose; in a large city ruffians will never be wanting, till the police of cities, and the moral condition of the inferior classes, be very different from what they are throughout all Christendom; and that he might have sure subjects at his command, he had opened the prisons and let their inmates loose. On the 5th of June, when the evening was closing, Calvo led his rabble to the citadel, and forced some friars to accompany them. Little resistance was made by the guard; the Frenchmen were led one by one into an apartment, to be confessed by the friars, like condemned criminals, then thrust out by some of these infatuated and infuriated wretches, felled with bludgeons, and dispatched by the knife. When the Junta heard that this horrible massacre was going on, they called out the monks and friars, and sent them to the scene of slaughter, carrying the host uncovered, and with lighted tapers, chanting as they went. At that sight the wretches ceased from their murderous work, and, smeared as they were with blood, knelt by the bodies of their dead and dying victims, in adoration. But Calvo, more obdurate than the very murderers whom he directed, called on them to complete what they had begun; he intimated to the religioners, that if they interposed in behalf of the French, they should be considered as accomplices with them, and partake their fate: and they, intimidated by the threat, and appalled by the dreadful objects before them, withdrew, ... when that spirit of heroic devotion, which looks upon martyrdom without dismay, might surely have prevented farther bloodshed, and redeemed the Valencians from the shame of the foulest excesses by which a cause so righteous in itself was sullied.