It was a noble feeling which led these peasants to sacrifice themselves in defence of the Escurial, and the action did not pass unnoticed by those able and enlightened Spaniards whose patriotic writings at this time did honour to themselves and to their country. “Nothing,” said Don Isidro de Antillon, “is more worthy of public interest, and nothing will more excite the admiration of posterity, than a deed like this. If indeed we had only armies to oppose to Buonaparte, infallibly we should become his slaves; the victory would be the usurper’s beyond all resource. But it is the collective strength of our inhabited places, the defence of our walls, the obstinate and repeated resistance of the people in the streets and gateways, along the roads and upon the heights, wherever they can cut off or annoy the detachments of the enemy, ... the universal spirit of insurrection, now become as it were the very element of our existence; this it is which disconcerts his plans, which renders his victories useless, and after a thousand vicissitudes and disasters, will finally establish the independence and the glory of Spain.” ♦EXCESSES OF THE FRENCH.♦ Lefebvre entered Madrid on the 8th of December. Buonaparte reviewed his division in the Prado, and dispatched it to Toledo, while Sebastiani with another division marched for Talavera. In that city, by the 19th, about 25,000 French were assembled, including 5000 cavalry. The wiser inhabitants fled before their arrival, preferring the miseries of emigration to the insults and atrocities which they must otherwise have endured: for the exaction of heavy contributions, which reduced half the people to beggary, was the least evil those towns endured that fell under the yoke of the French. Every where the soldiers were permitted to plunder; no asylum could secure the women from their unrestrained brutality; churches and convents were profaned with as little compunction as dwelling-houses were broken open; and in many instances, the victims were exposed naked in the streets. The Spanish government exclaimed loudly against these enormities. “In other times,” they said, “war was carried on between army and army, soldier and soldier; their fury spent itself upon the field of battle; and when courage, combined with fortune, had decided the victory, the conquerors behaved to the conquered like men of honour, and the defenceless people were respected. The progress of civilization had tempered the evils of hostility, till a nation which so lately boasted that it was the most polished in the world, renewed, in the 19th century, the cruelty of the worst savages, and all the horrors which make us tremble in perusing the history of the irruptions of the barbarians of old. Like tygers, these enemies make no distinction in their carnage, ... the aged, the infants, the women, ... all are alike to them, wherever they can find blood to shed.”