This storm seemed to be the signal of hell for the perpetration of villainy which would have shamed the most ferocious barbarians of antiquity. At Ciudad Rodrigo intoxication and plunder had been the principal object; at Badajos lust and murder were joined to rapine and drunkenness; but at San Sebastian, the direst, the most revolting cruelty was added to the catalogue of crimes. One atrocity of which a girl of seventeen was the victim, staggers the mind by its enormous, incredible, indescribable barbarity. Some order was at first maintained, but the resolution of the troops to throw off discipline was quickly made manifest. A British staff-officer was pursued with a volley of small arms and escaped with difficulty from men who mistook him for the provost-martial of the fifth division; a Portuguese adjutant, who endeavoured to prevent some atrocity, was put to death in the market-place, not with sudden violence from a single ruffian, but deliberately by a number of English soldiers. Many officers exerted themselves to preserve order, many men were well conducted, but the rapine and violence commenced by villains soon spread, the camp-followers crowded into the place, and the disorder continued until the flames following the steps of the plunderer put an end to his ferocity by destroying the whole town. Three generals, Leith, Oswald, and Robinson, had been hurt in the trenches, sir Richard Fletcher the chief engineer, a brave man who had served his country honorably was killed, and colonel Burgoyne the next in command of that arm was wounded. The carnage at the breaches was appalling. The volunteers, although brought late into the action, had nearly half their number struck down, most of the regiments of the fifth division suffered in the same proportion, and the whole loss since the renewal of the siege exceeded two thousand five hundred men and officers.