These execrable conquerors kept up a heavy fire upon the landing-place, where women and children stood grouped together, crowding to the British boats; and they endeavoured to sink the boats that were employed in this service of humanity. Suchet stated in his official account that four thousand men were killed in the city, and a thousand sabred or drowned in endeavouring to make their escape, ... “a horrible massacre had been made,” he said, “with little loss on the side of the conquerors; the terrible example which he had foreseen had taken place, and would be long remembered in Spain!” From the Spaniards and from our own officers we learned what was the nature of this example, which, because it was threatened, must be believed to have been predetermined! More than 6000 unresisting persons were butchered; old and young, man and woman, mother and babe; and when the enemy had satiated their thirst for blood they turned to the perpetration of crimes more damnable than murder. In the streets and in the churches they violated women who had escaped their first fury, only to suffer now worse horrors before they died. Nuns and wives, and widows in the hour when they were widowed, girls and children, were seized on by these monsters, ... and, retaining their cruelty when rage and lust were palled, they threw many of these victims, and of the wounded Spaniards, into the burning houses. There were officers in this accursed army whose hearts revolted at the wicked service in which they were engaged, and who at all times redeemed themselves as far as they could by acts of individual humanity. What little mercy was shown at Tarragona ... little indeed it was, ... was owing to such men. But General Suchet was of the school of terrorists[29]; his intention was to intimidate Catalonia and the whole of Spain by this terrible example; and on the following morning he ordered the Alcaldes and Corregidores from the surrounding country to be brought together and led through the streets of Tarragona, that they might see the bodies ♦CONTRERAS, P. 72.♦ which were lying there, and report to their countrymen what they might expect if they dared attempt resistance to the French! If, indeed, at ♦CAMPOVERDE RESOLVES TO ABANDON CATALONIA.♦ any time it were possible to intimidate such a people as the Catalans, who in all ages have shown the same invincible resolution, it would have been now, when the last bulwark of the province had fallen. By some strange imprudence the greater part of their ammunition had been deposited there, and very little remained in those parts of the country which were yet free. There still remained in the field the remains of an army which they had clothed and armed at their own cost, as well as raised among themselves; and which, often as it had been defeated, had nevertheless shown a braver countenance to the enemy, and inflicted upon him greater loss than any other in the Spanish ♦JULY 1.♦ service. The general, however, held a council of