The scenes which followed the fall of the place are indescribable; the victorious troops gave themselves up to plunder and licentiousness of every description. Drink drove them mad, and no one could control them. There is no denying the fact that fearful crimes were committed by the British soldiers in Badajoz that night, for each man carried his loaded musket and his bayonet, and brooked no interference with his revels. Yet these men were not hardened criminals, for in their sober moments they would have shuddered at the very mention of such crimes as, under the influence of drink, they themselves committed. They started to enjoy themselves--to hold high carnival--but they were drunk with success at the outset, and, even before the wine-vaults had been sacked, the carnival became the wildest and most lawless ever held. But with this great tragedy scraps of comedy occasionally mingled, and some of the scenes would, at any other time, have been considered highly entertaining. Dressed as monks and nuns, or wearing the gay clothes of Spanish ladies, grizzled and begrimed veterans danced and sang through the streets; and when eventually they were driven out of the town, they wended their way to their bivouacs, wearing these same garments, and staggering under the weight of such plunder as they had collected. Quartermaster Surtees, who had an opportunity of seeing for himself many of the horrors of this night and of the next day, tells the hideous tale, in his 'Twenty-five Years in the Rifle Brigade,' sufficiently fully to enable one to realise how utterly demoralised a well-disciplined army can become almost at a moment's notice. His remarks on the reason for this are of particular value, because he had risen from the ranks and was intimately acquainted with human nature as represented by the private soldier, and because he was a man who thought deeply. He concludes his account of the sacking of Badajoz in the following words:--