Four days after the murder of San Juan, and the dispersion of his army, two divisions of French cavalry, under Milhaud and Lasalle, entered Talavera. They found the body of the Spanish General still on the gibbet, and this murder furnished Buonaparte with a new subject of invective against the Spaniards; though this, and the thousand deaths, and all the untold crimes, and all the unutterable miseries with which the peninsula was filled, were the consequences of his own single conduct, the fruits of his individual wickedness. Lasalle fell in with sixteen Englishmen upon the road, stragglers from General Hope’s detachment, and it was related in the bulletins[39] of Buonaparte, as an exploit worthy of remembrance and commendation, that a division of French cavalry, falling in with sixteen Englishmen who had lost their way, put them to the sword. This was but a small part of the force which was destined to proceed in this direction. As soon as Madrid had been delivered up, Lefebvre was ordered to advance from Valladolid towards Lisbon. First he advanced to Segovia, which he entered unresisted. The people were dispirited by the panic and flight of their armies; but it should not be forgotten for their exculpation, that the more generous and heroic spirits, having flocked to their country’s standard among the foremost levies, had already received their crown of martyrdom, or were clinging to the wreck of the two great armies of the north and the centre, or were consummating the sacrifice of duty in Zaragoza. In one place only between Valladolid and the capital did this part of the French army experience any opposition. The pass of Guadarrama was open to them: General Hope had been stationed there, but was recalled by Sir John Moore, and there were no native troops to supply his place. But when the enemy descended ♦THE FRENCH TAKE POSSESSION OF THE ESCURIAL.♦ upon the Escurial, and proceeded to take possession of that palace, the magnificent monument of a victory which Spain had achieved over France in open, honourable war, and in a fair field, they found the peasantry assembled to defend the seat and sepulchres of their kings. Undisciplined as they were, ill-armed, and with none to direct their efforts, they stood their ground till they were overpowered by practised troops, superior in numbers as well as in arms; and the French, after the slaughter of these brave peasants before the gates, took up their quarters in the palace of the Philips. He who founded that stately pile, could he then have beheld from his grave what was passing around him, would have seen the consequences of that despotic system which he and his father established upon the ruins of the old free constitution of Spain.