The bodies of these victims were suspended from the gallows till the following day, when the French gave orders that they should be taken down and buried. But the execution had been an act of impolitic severity: after Duran’s recent visit the national cause would not have been popular in Soria, unless the national feeling had been thus provoked; and that feeling was now manifested in a manner which the invaders had not looked for. The clergy, the nobles, the different brotherhoods of the city, and the people assembled: the bodies were carried to the church of St. Salvador in procession, with a long line of tapers, and a most numerous attendance; they were then dressed in grave clothes with becoming decency, that of the priest in his sacerdotal habits. So public and ostentatious a funeral was considered by the French an insult to their authority; soldiers, therefore, were sent to interrupt it, and some of the attendants were compelled to carry the bodies back to the gallows and hang them there again, the priest in his alb, the others in their shrouds; there they remained many days, and what the birds and the dogs had left was then buried at the foot of the gallows. ♦RETALIATORY EXECUTIONS.♦ When D. Jose O’Donell, who commanded what was called the 2nd and 3rd army then in Murcia, received official intelligence of these executions, he wrote to Duran, as acting commander in Aragon and Soria, and instructed him to put to death ten prisoners, without distinction of rank, for each of the four victims, first apprising the nearest French commandant that he had received these orders, and should act upon them unless such reparation were made as might be deemed proportionate to the offence. Without waiting for such instructions, the Merino had exacted vengeance upon a larger scale. Having defeated a considerable body of the French who had marched from Aranda, to collect requisitions, killed and wounded some 150 and taken about 500 prisoners, he put 110 of them to death, twenty of these being in reprisals for each member of the Junta of Burgos; the others, at the rate of ten for each of his own people whom the French had executed. The other prisoners were marched into Asturias where opportunity might be found for embarking them; but all the officers, twelve in number, including the lieutenant-colonel, their commander, were reserved to be shot unless General Rey, who commanded at Burgos, would rescue them from that fate by delivering the traitor Moreno into the Merino’s hands. The unhappy prisoners are said to have addressed a letter to Rey, entreating him to save their lives by complying with this proposal, for they well knew that in these cases the Spaniards never failed to execute what they threatened. The issue has not been related, but may easily be guessed, as it was scarcely possible that the French commander should so far break his faith with a Spaniard in the Intruder’s service as to deliver him to certain death. ♦EL MANCO.♦