short breeches, frilled shirt, and a hat and plumes, followed by our ragamuffin soldiers with fixed bayonets, presented a scene that Cruikshank himself would have been puzzled to delineate justly. The plunder so captured was deposited under a guard composed principally of soldiers’ wives. A few hours were sufficient to despoil the shops of their property. Night then closed in, and then a scene took place that pen would fail to describe. Insult and infamy, fiendish acts of violence and open-handed cruelty, everywhere prevailed. Age, as well as youth, was alike unrespected, and perhaps not one house, and scarcely a person, in this vast town, escaped injury. War is a terrible engine, and when once set in motion, it is not possible to calculate when or where it will stop. “The 8th of April was a fearful day for the inhabitants. The soldiers had become so reckless that no person’s life, of whatever sex, rank, or station, was safe. If they entered a house that had not been despoiled of its furniture and wines, they were at once destroyed. If it was empty, they fired at the windows, or at the inmates, or often at each other. Then they would sally into the streets, and amuse themselves by firing at the church bells in the steeples, or at any one who might be passing. Many of the soldiers were killed, while carrying away their plunder, by the hands of those who, a few hours before, would have risked their own lives to protect them. Hundreds of these fellows took possession of the best warehouses, and acted as merchants; these were ejected by a stronger party, who, after a fearful strife, would displace them, only themselves to give place to others, with terrible loss of life. To put a stop to such a frightful scene, it was necessary to use some forbearance, as well as severity; for, to have punished all who were guilty would have been to decimate the army. In the first instance, parties from those regiments that had least participated in the combat were ordered into the town to collect the hordes of stragglers, that filled the streets with crimes too horrible to detail; and, when this measure was found inadequate, a brigade of troops were marched into the city, and were directed to stand by their arms, while any marauders remained. Gibbets and triangles were erected, and many of the men were flogged. A few hours so employed were sufficient to purge the town of the robbers that still lurked in the streets, many of whom were Spaniards and Portuguese, not connected with the army, and infinitely worse than our troops. Towards evening tranquillity began to return; but it was a fearful quiet, and might be likened to a ship at sea, which, after having been plundered and dismasted by pirates, should be left floating on the ocean, without a morsel of food to supply the wants of its crew, or a stitch of canvas to cover its naked masts. By degrees, however, the inhabitants returned, and families left alive