History of the Peninsular War, Volume 3 (of 6)Southey, Robert
History
History of the Peninsular War, Volume 3 (of 6)
Southey, Robert
Peninsular War, 1807-1814
in contempt of the capitulation, plundered of every thing, stripped of
the devices of their different ranks, and pushed in among the common
soldiers as leaders of insurgents. It was affirmed in the French
bulletin that 17,000 men laid down their arms: there were not more than
four-and-twenty hundred capable of bearing them; the rest were in the
hospitals, and this, with five-and-twenty hundred taken in the suburbs
and during the siege, was the number which was marched off for France.
Two hundred and seventy of these men, who from fatigue and weakness
could not keep up the pace which their ferocious guard required, were
butchered and left on the road, where their companions in the next
division might march over their bodies. Augustina Zaragoza was among
the prisoners. She had distinguished herself in this siege as much as
in the former. At the commencement she took her former station at the
Portillo, by the same gun which she had served so well; “See, general,”
said she, with a cheerful countenance, pointing to the gun when Palafox
visited that quarter, “I am again with my old friend.” Her husband
was severely wounded, and she pointed the cannon at the enemy, while
he lay bleeding among his companions by her side. Frequently she was
at the head of an assaulting party, sword or knife in hand, with her
cloak wrapt round her, cheering the soldiers, and encouraging them
by her example; constantly exposed as she was, she escaped without a
wound: yet once she was thrown into a ditch, and nearly suffocated
by the dead and dying who covered her. At the close of the siege she
was too well known by the French to escape notice, and they made her
prisoner. Fortunately, as it proved, she had at that time taken the
contagion, and was removed to the hospital, where, as she was supposed
to be dying, little care was taken to secure her. Feeling herself
better, she availed herself of this, and effected her escape. Another
heroine, whose name was Manuella Sanchez, was shot through the heart.
Donna Benita, a lady of distinction, who headed one of the female corps
which had been formed to carry provisions, bear away the wounded, and
fight in the streets, escaped the hourly dangers to which she exposed
herself, only to die of grief upon hearing that her daughter had been
killed. During the siege six hundred women and children perished, not
by the bombardment and the mines, but in action, by the sword, or
bayonet or bullet.
♦TREATMENT OF PALAFOX.♦
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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