left Tafalla, they drew up in the centre of the city, and the band played, to comfort, Cruchaga said, the hearts of the Spaniards! ♦MINA’S OBJECT IN SOLICITING FOR MILITARY RANK.♦ Mina had obtained military rank for himself and his officers, and was now colonel and commandant-general of the division of Navarre, under which appellation his troops were considered as attached to the seventh army under Mendizabal. Pre-eminent as were the services of this chief and his followers, they did not obtain this rank without repeated solicitations, and the direct interference of the Cortes; for the Regency at first would only concede them the title of _urbanos_[31], or local militia. The fitness of this designation was well exposed by Sr. Terreros: “They,” said he, “who go among the mountains hunting the wild beasts of France, and bathing their weapons in French blood, are local militia! and they who live at home and drag their sabres at their heels in coffeehouses, are regulars and veterans!” ... Mina’s object in soliciting rank in the regular army was, that his men when they fell into the hands of the enemy might not be put to death as insurgents; but, like the Empecinado, and Manso, and Ballasteros, he found that men who were equally destitute of honour and humanity could only be made to observe the ordinary usages of war by the law of retaliation. Repeatedly and earnestly had he applied to the French generals, conjuring them to respect the laws of war; nor did he cease to remonstrate till farther forbearance would have been a crime. In the course of two days twelve peasants were shot by the French in Estella, sixteen in Pamplona, and thirty-eight of his soldiers, and four officers, were put to death: Mina then issued a decree for reprisals, exclaiming, ♦HIS DECREE FOR REPRISALS.♦ that the measure was full. He began his manifesto by contrasting his own conduct with that of these ferocious invaders; then declared war to the death and without quarter, without distinction of officers or soldiers, and especially including by name Napoleon Buonaparte. Wherever the French might be taken, with or without arms, in action or out of it, they were to be hung, and their bodies exposed along the highways, in their regimentals, and with a ticket upon each specifying his name. Every house in which a Frenchman should have been hidden should be burnt, and its inhabitants put to death. If from any village information were given to the enemy that there were volunteers there, such volunteers not amounting to eight in number, five hundred ducats should be levied upon that village, for the information; and if any volunteer in consequence should have fallen into the hands of the French, four of that village should be chosen by lot and put to death. Mina’s anxiety not to bring the inhabitants into danger is apparent in this decree; he seems to have thought that if as many as eight volunteers were in one village, the imminent hazard of concealing them might exempt the