This is what the French relate of their conduct at Leiria. “Sepulchres of Leiria,” exclaims the Portugueze historian of these events, “prove ye the falsehood with which these robbers, as cruel as they are perfidious, have deceived the world!” What they have not related is now to be recorded. It is not dissembled by the Portugueze that the defence was as feeble and as momentary as the enemy describe it. They entered the city on all sides, and began an indiscriminate butchery; old and young, women and babes, were butchered, in the streets, in the houses, in the churches, in the fields. The most atrocious acts of cruelty were committed, and not by the common soldiers only. One of the superior officers related of himself, that a feeling of pity came over him when upon entering the town he met a woman with an infant at her breast, but calling to mind that he was a soldier, he pierced mother and child with one thrust! Free scope was given to every ♦MEMOIR OF THE EARLY CAMPAIGNS OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON, P. 8.♦ abominable passion; and in the general pillage the very graves were opened, upon the supposition that treasure might have been hidden there, as in a place where no plunderer would look to find it. When the slaughter in the streets had ceased, they began to hunt for prisoners, and all who were found were taken to an open space before the Chapel of S. Bartholomew, there to be put to death like the prisoners at Jaffa. The greater number of these poor wretches fell on their knees, some stretching their hands in unavailing agony toward their murderers for mercy; others, lifting them to heaven, directed their last prayers where mercy would be found. The murderers, ♦NEVES, IV. 37–42.♦ as if they delighted in the act of butchery, began their work with the sword and bayonet and the but-end of the musket, and finished it by firing upon their [16]victims. ♦LOISON’S MARCH FROM ALMEIDA TO ABRANTES.♦