A bridge crossed the river. Crowded with the frenzied multitude, it sank under their weight, and the stream was black with the bodies of drowning men. Those in the rear, by thousands, pressed those before them into the yawning gulf. Boats pushed out from the banks to rescue them, but the light artillery of the French was already upon the water's edge, discharging volleys of grape upon the helpless, compact mass. Before the city surrendered, four thousand of these unhappy victims of war, torn with shot, and suffocated by the waves, were swept down the stream. Though the marshal exerted himself to the utmost to preserve discipline, no mortal man could restrain the passions of an army in such an hour. The wretched city experienced all the horrors of a town taken by storm. The number of the slain, according to the report of Marshal Soult, was more than eighteen thousand, not including those who were engulfed in the Douro. Multitudes of the wounded fled to the woods, where they perished miserably of exposure and starvation. But two hundred and fifty prisoners were taken. The French took two hundred thousand pounds of powder, a vast amount of stores, and tents for the accommodation of fifty thousand men. They captured also in the port thirty English vessels loaded with wine. The loss of the French in capturing Oporto, according to the report of the general-in-chief, was but eighty killed, and three hundred and fifty wounded. It is heart-sickening to proceed with the recital of these horrors. Similar scenes took place in Tarancon, where General Victor destroyed the remains of the regular Spanish army with terrible slaughter. A band of about twelve thousand men were cut to pieces by General Sebastiani. Again the Spaniards met with a fearful repulse upon the plains of Estremadura. The Spanish general, Cuesta, with twenty thousand infantry and four thousand horse, was attacked by General Victor with fifteen thousand foot and three thousand horse. As usual, the French cut to pieces their despised foes, capturing all their artillery, inflicting upon them a loss in killed, wounded, and prisoners, of ten thousand men, while the French lost but about one thousand. While these scenes were transpiring, Joseph, at Madrid, not only occupied himself with the general direction of the war, so far as the instructions which he perpetually received from Paris enabled him to do, but labored incessantly, as he had done in Naples, in promoting all needful reforms, and in forming and executing plans for the happiness of his subjects. He caused a constitution, which had been formed at Bayonne, to be published and widely circulated, that the Spaniards might be convinced that it was his desire to reign over them as a father rather than as a sovereign. Napoleon, speaking of his brother Joseph to Dr. O'Meara at Saint Helena, said: