A riot broke out among the people on discovering that the French were about to carry off the Spanish _Infantes_. The blood of some comparatively innocent Frenchmen was shed, and the base governor and magistrates of Madrid allowed Murat to make his own terms, which were nothing less, in fact, than the dispersion of the troops, who were ordered to clear out of their barracks, and hand them over to the French. The two artillery officers, Daoiz and Valarde, with one infantry officer named Ruiz, and a few of the populace, refused, and, all unaided, attempted to hold the barracks of Monteleon against the French army of invasion! The end was certain; but little recked these Spaniards of the old type. Daoiz and Valarde were killed, the former murdered by French bayonets after being wounded, on the cannon by which they had stood alone against the whole power of the French troops; Ruiz also was shot. On the following day, Murat led out some scores of the patriots who had dared to oppose him, and shot them on the spot of the Prado now sacred to their memory. Thus was the torch of the Peninsular War lighted. As one man the nation rose; the labourer armed himself with his agricultural implements, the workman with his tools; without leaders, nay, in defiance of those who should have led them, the people sprang to action, and, with England's help, the usurper was driven from the throne of France, and finally caged in St. Helena. But it is never forgotten that Spain--these two or three sons of hers preferring honour to life--has the glory of having been the first to oppose and check the man and the nation that aspired to tyrannise over Europe. It is not too much to say that the conduct of every individual in Cervera's fleet at Santiago de Cuba showed that the Spaniard's magnificent courage, his absolute devotion to duty, and his disregard of death are no whit less to-day than when those two thousand naked men stood in the breach to be slain in the name of their country's honour. The _Oquendo_, already a wreck, coming quietly out of her safe moorings in obedience to the insane orders of the Government in Madrid, steering her way with absolute coolness so as to clear the sunken _Diamante_, to face certain and hideous death, is a picture which can never fade from memory. It was said at the time by their enemies that there was not a man in the Spanish fleet that did not deserve the Victoria Cross; and this was all the more true because there was not even a forlorn hope: it was obedience to orders in the absolute certainty of death, and, what was harder still, with full knowledge of the utter uselessness of the sacrifice. It is difficult to imagine that anyone can read the record of this heroic passage in the history of the Spain of to-day without a throb of admiration and pity. No wonder that the generous enemy went out of their way to do honour to the melancholy remnant of heroes as they mounted the sides of the American ironclads, prisoners of war.