On the other hand, the French had as yet abated nothing of that insolent cruelty with which they began the contest, supposing that they could intimidate the Spanish nation. Soult, ♦MAY 9.♦ who had recommended that all the commanding ♦SEE VOL. III. P. 446.♦ officers employed in Spain should be _impassible_, ... incapable of any feeling by which they might even possibly be moved to compunction, ... issued at this time an edict not less extraordinary than Kellermann’s. After various enactments, some of which were as impracticable as they were rigorous, imposing penalties upon the inhabitants of those districts in which the patriotic parties should commit any crimes, as this Frenchman was pleased to denominate their hostilities against the invaders of their country; he pronounced, “that there was no Spanish army, except that of his Catholic Majesty, King Joseph Napoleon; all parties, therefore, which existed in the provinces, whatever might be their number, and whoever might be their commander, should be treated as banditti, who had no other object than robbery and murder; and all the individuals of such parties who might be taken in arms should be immediately condemned and shot, and their bodies exposed along ♦COUNTER EDICT OF THE REGENCY.♦ the highways.” When the Regency found that this decree was actually carried into effect, they ♦AUG. 15.♦ reprinted it, with a counter decree by its side, in French and Spanish, declaring anew, “that every Spaniard capable of bearing arms was in these times a soldier; that for every one who should be murdered by the French, in consequence of the edict of the ferocious Soult, who called himself Duke of Dalmatia, the three first Frenchmen taken in arms should infallibly be hanged; three for every house which the enemy burnt in their devastating system, and three for every person who should perish in the fire.” Soult himself they declared unworthy of the protection of the law of nations, while his decree remained unrepealed. They gave orders, that if he were taken, he should be punished as a robber; and they took measures for circulating both decrees throughout Europe, to the end that all persons might be informed of the atrocious conduct of these enemies of the human race; and that those inhabitants of the countries which were in alliance with France, or, more truly, which were enslaved by her, who were unhappy enough to have children, or kinsmen, or friends serving in the French armies in Spain, might see the fate prepared for them by the barbarity of a monster, who thought by such means to subdue a free and noble nation. CHAPTER XXXI. ASTORGA TAKEN BY THE FRENCH. SIEGE AND FALL OF CIUDAD RODRIGO. ♦1810.♦ ♦INACTIVITY BEFORE CADIZ.♦