At Santa Cruz, Stanley found the insurrectionists had fled to the mountains, leaving forty prisoners; he returned to Madrid, to join General Sickles and his suite, on a visit to the Palace of La Granja, called the ‘Cloud Palace of the King of Spain.’ He hears in Madrid, one evening, that several battalions and regiments had been despatched towards Saragossa. ‘Naturally I wanted to know what was going on there. What did the departure of all these troops to Saragossa mean? So one hour later, at 8.30 P.M., I took the train, and arrived at Saragossa the next morning at 6 A.M.’ And here Stanley witnessed a rising of the people, ‘proud and passionate, the Berber and Moorish blood coursing through their veins.’ They resisted the order to give up Arms. ‘Then, with their bayonets, they prise up the granite blocks, and, with the swiftness of magic, erect a barricade, formidable, wide, a granite and cobblestone fortification, breast-high. One, two, three, four, and five, aye, ten barricades are thrown up, almost as fast as tongue can count them. ‘My eye,’ says Stanley, ‘finds enough to note; impossible to note the whole, for there are a hundred things and a thousand things taking place. Carts are thrown on the summit of the barricades; cabs caught unawares are launched on high, sofas and bureaux and the strangest kind of obstructions are piled above all.’ Stanley himself was on a balcony, not within the barricade, but half a block outside. He saw a battery of mounted trained Artillery halt five hundred yards from where he stood. He watched them dismount the guns and prepare for action; and was present at the bursting and rending of shells and the ceaseless firing of musketry from the barricades. ‘As the bullets flattened themselves with a dull thud against the balcony where I stood, I sought the shelter of the roof, and behind a friendly cornice, I observed the desperate fighting.’ Though the firing had been incessant for an hour, little damage had been done to the barricade. The soldiers, advancing at short range, were shot down; again the Artillery thundered, and, when the smoke dispersed, Stanley saw the soldiers had approached nearer. ‘The scene was one of desperation against courage allied with a certain cold enthusiasm; as fast as one soldier fell, another took his place. I witnessed personal instances of ferocity and courage which made me hold my breath. To me--who was, I really believe, the sole disinterested witness of that terrible battle--they appeared like characters suddenly called out to perform in some awful tragedy; and, so fascinated was I by the strange and dreadful spectacle, I could not look away.’