Note 311 — SECTION XIII: CHAPTER V

It is impossible to make out why Alcantara was treated so much worse than other places taken by storm, but the facts are well vouched for. The report of the local authorities to Cuesta says that not only all peasants taken with arms in their hands, but more than forty non-combatants were butchered, and that not a woman who had remained in the place escaped rape. Lillie, the historian of the Lusitanian Legion, who was with the force that pursued Lapisse from Rodrigo, says that he saw the traces of ‘acts of barbarity that would disgrace the most savage and uncivilized of mankind’—corpses deliberately mutilated and laid out to roast on piles of burning furniture, with the bodies of domestic animals, such as pigs and dogs, placed on the top of the pile as if in jest [Lusitanian Legion, pp. 66-7]. The German historian Schepeler gives very similar details, adding the note about the dragging up of bones and coffins from the churches.