This enterprise led to a tragedy characteristic of the spirit in which the war was carried on on both sides. The French, who had come in time to save the castle of Soria, obtained intelligence that the Junta of Burgos were in a village called Grado; and there, under the guidance of a Spanish traitor, Moreno by name, a party of 450 horse, making a march of fourteen leagues in less than four-and-twenty hours, surprised them early in the morning. Some twenty soldiers with their commander were found fast asleep, and made prisoners, as were three members of the Junta and the secretary of the Intendency: but more persons escaped than were taken, though the enemy set every house on fire, with the intention of burning those who might have hidden themselves. As soon as the news was known, Duran and the Junta of Soria sent to the French commander in that city, reminding him that the prisoners taken there had been treated with humanity, and threatening reprisals if the persons who had now been captured should be put to death. This was of no avail. The vice-president of the Junta, D. Pedro Gordo, who was the parochial priest of Santibañez, was inhumanly scourged by Moreno, ... perhaps from some impulse of private enmity: the prisoners were then conducted to Aranda, from whence the soldiers contrived to effect their escape. Navas, the secretary of Gordo, and the two other members of the Junta, D. Jose Ortiz de Covarrubios, and D. Eulogio Jose de Muro, with a young lad, son of the former, were sent in irons to Soria, there to be tried by the criminal Junta of that ♦APRIL 2.♦ city. The trial, which took place during the night, occupied five hours, all the formalities of justice being observed; and the boy, whom because of his youth it would have been monstrous to condemn, was acquitted: the other four were sentenced to death, and four priests were ordered immediately to attend them; but no more time was allowed than was necessary for bringing together and forming the soldiers who were to conduct them to the place of execution.