Note 502 — SECTION XV: CHAPTER II

On reaching Zamora, Franceschi handed over the charge of his division to General Pierre Soult, the Marshal’s brother, and rode on towards Madrid with no escort but two aides-de-camp. They were captured near Toro by the celebrated guerrilla chief El Capuchino (Fray Juan Delica), who sent the important dispatches which they were bearing to Seville: Frere instantly forwarded a copy to Wellesley (July 9), who thus got invaluable information as to Soult’s situation and future intentions. In the Record Office there is a letter requesting that the news of Franceschi’s captivity may be sent to his wife in Paris, which was duly done. The unfortunate general was imprisoned first at Granada and then at Cartagena: in both places, it is said, he was treated with unjustifiable rigour, and kept in close confinement within four walls—it was the same usage that Napoleon meted out to Palafox. He died of a fever in 1811, after two years’ captivity.