The horrors which ensued will be remembered in Portugal while any record of past times shall be preserved there. Though even a military pretext was wanting for delivering up the city and the inhabitants to the will of the soldiers, the whole proceedings of the Portugueze and their Spanish allies having been those of regular war, to them it was abandoned. A resolution had been taken in the Junta that those persons who feared the event should provide for their safety by retiring in time; ... from some unexplained cause, most probably from a well-grounded fear that any persons who attempted to remove would be regarded as traitors by the furious populace, few or none availed themselves of this ominous warning; when it was too late great numbers got over the walls, but the French horse surrounded the city, and showed as little mercy to the fugitives without, as the infantry did to the ♦INHUMANITY OF THE CONQUERORS.♦ inhabitants within. The convents and churches afforded no asylum; not those who had borne arms alone, but children and old men, were massacred, and women were violated and slaughtered. The lowest computation makes the number of these victims amount to 900. The clergy and religioners were especial objects of vengeance: they were literally hunted from their hiding-places like wild beasts: eight-and-thirty were butchered; among them was the Bishop of Maranham. The Archbishop’s intercession with Loison obtained only a promise that a stop should be put to these enormities; no attempt was made to restrain them that day, nor during the whole night, nor till eleven on the following morning, and then by an order of the General, what he called the lawful pillage was declared to be at an end; but he contented himself with ♦OBSERVADOR PORTUGUEZ, 387. NEVES, IV. 138–142.♦ issuing the order; no means for enforcing it were taken, and the soldiers continued their abominations till every place had been ransacked, and their worst passions had been[22] glutted. ♦ALARM AT ESTREMOZ.♦