Note 101 — Chapter I

It is astonishing to find that Napier (i. 114) expressly denies that Cordova was sacked. Foy (iii. 231), the best of the French historians, acknowledges that ‘unarmed civilians were shot, churches and houses sacked, and scenes of horror enacted such as had not been seen since the Christian drove out the Moor in 1236.’ Captain Baste, the best narrator among French eye-witnesses, speaks of assassination, general pillage, and systematic rape. Cabany, Dupont’s laudatory biographer, confesses (p. 89) to drunkenness and deplorable excesses, and allows that Dupont distributed 300,000 francs as a ‘gratification’ among his general officers. Many of the details given above are derived from the official narrative of the Cordovan municipal authorities printed in the Madrid Gazette.