"It is in vain for you to use the name of the people," exclaimed Napoleon. "If you cannot succeed in calming them, it is because you yourselves have excited them, and have led them astray by your falsehoods. Bring together the curés, the heads of convents, the principal proprietors, and let the town surrender between this and six o'clock in the morning, or else it will have ceased to exist. I have no desire to withdraw my troops, nor ought I. You massacred the unhappy French prisoners who fell into your hands. A short time ago you allowed to be dragged in the streets and put to death two servants of the Russian ambassador because they were Frenchmen. The want of skill and the cowardice of a general placed in your hands some troops which had capitulated on the battle-field, and the capitulation was violated. What kind of letter, M. Morla, did you write to that general? It became you well to speak of pillaging, you who entered Roussillon and carried off all the women, to divide them among your soldiers like booty. What right had you, on other grounds, to use such language? You were prevented by the capitulation. Consider the conduct of the English, who certainly do not boast of being rigid observers of the rights of nations. They have complained of the convention of Portugal, but they executed it. To violate military treaties is to renounce all civilization; it is to place one's self on a level with the Bedouins of the desert. How dare you ask a capitulation, you who violated that of Baylen? I had a fleet at Cadiz, the ally of Spain, and you turned against it the mortars of the town under your command. Go back to Madrid. I give you till six o'clock in the morning. Return then, if you have nothing to say of the people except that they have submitted: otherwise, you and your troops will all be put to the sword." The situation left to the insurgents no alternative but that of submission. During the night, the Marquis of Castellar went out with his troops by the gates which the French had not yet seized. At six in the morning, on the 4th December, Madrid surrendered. All the citizens were disarmed. Napoleon took possession of a small country-house at Chamartin, and King Joseph held his court at the Pardo, some distance from Madrid; the rebel town being thus held unworthy to be honored by the presence of its masters. Several great lords were arrested: the Marquis of St. Simon was even condemned to death, as a French emigrant in the Spanish service; but the sentence was badly received by the soldiers, and left unexecuted. A series of decrees abolished the feudal rights, the Inquisition, and the custom duties in passing from one province to another. The number of convents was reduced by a third. The conquests of liberty and civilization thus imposed on the Spanish by their oppressors naturally became hateful to them. Thus one of the results of Napoleon's Spanish campaign was to prepare a reaction in favor of the Inquisition.