Among other instances of Portuguese ferocity, and of the truculent violence of the French soldiers, the death of colonel Lameth, and the retaliation which followed, may be cited. That young officer, when returning from the marshal’s quarters to his own, was waylaid, near the village of Arrifana, and murdered; his body was then stripped, and mutilated in a shocking manner. This assassination, committed within the French lines, and at a time when Soult enforced the strictest discipline, was justifiable neither by the laws of war nor by those of humanity. No general could neglect to punish such a proceeding. The protection due to the army, and even the welfare of the Portuguese within the French jurisdiction, demanded a severe example, for the violence of the troops had hitherto been with difficulty restrained by their commander; and if, at such a moment, he had appeared indifferent to their individual safety; his authority would have been set at naught, and the unmeasured and indiscriminating vengeance of an insubordinate army executed. Impressed with this feeling, and afflicted at the unhappy death of a personal friend, Soult directed general Thomieres to march, with a brigade of infantry, to Arrifana, and punish the criminals. Thomieres was accompanied by a Portuguese civilian; and, after a judicial inquiry, he shot five or six persons whose guilt was said to have been proved; but it is also certain that the principal actor, a Portuguese major of militia, and some of his accomplices, escaped across the Vouga to colonel Trant; and the latter, disgusted at their conduct, sent them to marshal Beresford. It would also appear, from the statement of a peasant, that Thomieres, or those under him, exceeded Soult’s orders; for, in that statement, attested by oath, it is said that twenty-four innocent persons were killed, and that the soldiers, after committing many atrocious excesses, burnt the village. [Sidenote: Appendix, No. 13.] These details have been related partly because they throw a light upon the direful nature of this contest, but chiefly because the transaction has been adduced by other writers as proof of cruelty in Soult, a charge not sustained by the facts of this case, and belied by the general tenor of his conduct, which even his enemies, while they attributed it to an insidious policy, acknowledged, at the time, to be mild and humane. And now, having finished this political digression, in which the chronological order of events has been anticipated, I shall resume the narrative of military operations at that part where the disorders attendant on the battle of Oporto having been repressed, a fresh series of combinations were commenced, not less important than those which brought the French army down to the Douro.