Chapter VI · (continued 2)

♦Murat leaves Spain.♦

Murat meantime had left Spain. Before he had well recovered from a severe attack of the Madrid colic an intermittent fever supervened, and when that was removed he was ordered by his physicians to the warm baths of Bareges. The Duc de Rovigo, General Savary, who had acted so considerable a part in decoying Ferdinand to Bayonne, succeeded in the command. ♦Several Frenchmen poisoned by the wine.♦ It happened at this time that several French soldiers, after drinking wine in the public houses at Madrid, died, some almost immediately, others after a short illness, under unequivocal symptoms of poison. Baron Larrey, who was at the head of the medical staff, acted with great prudence on this occasion. He sent for wine from different ventas, analyzed it, and detected narcotic ingredients in all; and he ascertained upon full inquiry that these substances, of which laurel-water was one, were as commonly used to flavour and strengthen the Spanish wines, as litharge is to correct acidity in the lighter wines of France. The natives were accustomed to it from their youth; they frequently mixed their wine with water, and moreover the practice of smoking over their liquor tended to counteract its narcotic effects by stimulating the stomach and the intestines: it was therefore not surprising that they could drink it with safety; though it proved fatal39 to a few strangers. M. Larrey therefore justly concluded that there had been no intention of poisoning the French; if such a suspicion had been intimated, execrated as they knew themselves to be, the troops would readily have believed it; and a bloodier massacre than that of the 2d of May must have ensued.