Burgos already felt all the weight of the conqueror's anger. The town was pitilessly sacked. "A sad sight," say the memoirs of Count Miot de Melito, who accompanied King Joseph as he entered the town; "the houses nearly all deserted and pillaged; the furniture, smashed in pieces, scattered in the mud of the streets; one quarter, on the other side of the Arlanzen, on fire; the soldiers madly forcing in doors and windows, breaking everything that came in their way, using little and destroying much; the churches stripped; the streets crowded with the dead and dying--in a word, all the horrors of an assault, although the town had offered no defence!" The emperor ordered all the wool to be seized which was found in the town: it belonged to the great Spanish nobles, and he had resolved to confiscate their property everywhere. "The Duke of Infantado and Spanish great lords," he wrote a few days afterwards to Cretet, the Minister of the Interior (on the 19th November), "are sole proprietors of half the kingdom of Naples, and in this kingdom they are worth not less than 200,000,000. They have, besides, possessions in Belgium, Piedmont, and Italy, which I intend to sequestrate. That is only the first rough draft of my plans". A decree of proscription had already been published, and a capital condemnation pronounced (12th November) against ten of the principal Spanish nobles. At that price, pardon was promised to all who made haste to make submission. Marshal Soult, the conqueror of Burgos, had already been despatched by the emperor in the direction of Reinosa, in order to complete the destruction of General Blake's army, already partially defeated, on the 11th and 12th by General Victor, near the small town of Espinosa, at the spot where the road from the Biscayan mountains crosses the road of the plain. Soult was late in arriving; but, after a vigorous resistance, the overthrow of Blake's army was so complete that there was no fear that the army of the left could soon rally. Napoleon ordered Lannes and Ney to crush the armies of the right and the centre, commanded by Palafox and Castanos. Ney failing to keep his appointment at Tudela on the 23rd November, owing to a mistake on the march, Lannes made the attack alone, taking by surprise the Spanish generals, who were undecided as to their course of action, disagreeing as to the place for meeting the enemy, and yet urged on to the engagement by the popular cries, already accusing them of treason. The battle was a serious one; and for a short time Lannes, reduced to his own troops, found himself in a difficult position. He was, moreover, ill from a fall from his horse, but succeeded in winning the battle, and drove before him, one after another, all the divisions of the enemy's army. With the cruel and heedless fickleness of revolutionary governments, the Junta of Aranjuez hurriedly cashiered Generals Blake and Castanos. The Marquis of Romana's soldiers having distinguished themselves at Espinosa, he was