Note 33 — Chapter V

The Moniteur stated the French loss at twenty-five killed, and from forty-five to fifty wounded, that of the Spaniards at “plusieurs milliers des plus mauvais sujets du pays.” On the other hand, D. Alvaro Florez Estrada, on the alleged authority of a return sent by Murat to Berthier, states the loss of the French at 7100, and that of his own countrymen, according, he says, to an account afterwards taken by the government, as not exceeding 200. Both statements are palpably false: in Estrada’s there may probably have been a mistake, (not of the printer, for the numbers are written in words), copied from some misprinted document; because there are accounts which reckon the French loss at 1700. Azanza and O’Farrill quote the Council of Castille as authority for affirming, that of the people 104 were killed, 54 wounded, and 35 missing. This is probably much below the truth: the Council at that time was acting under the fear of Murat, and Azanza and O’Farrill endeavour to pass as lightly as they can over the atrocities committed by that party which they afterwards served to the utmost of their power. Baron Larrey, in his Memoires de Chirurgie Militaire, (t.iii. 139) says, that the wounded of both nations were carried to the French military hospital, and that before night they had received there about 300 patients, 70 of whom belonged to the Imperial Guards. It may be suspected that there were very few Spaniards in this number, ... some of the wounded, we know, having been sent to the military tribunal, and delivered over not to the surgeons, but to the executioners: and it is certain, that in a contest of this kind, where, on the one part, stabbing instruments were almost the only weapons used, there would, on the other, be more persons killed than wounded. Wherever the French were found in small parties, they were massacred. An Englishman who was in the midst of this dreadful scene, told me the carnage was very great, and that he believed the French lost more than the Spaniards. This gentleman happened to be lodging with the same persons with whom I had lodged in the year 1796. Two women were killed in the house. The mistress (an Irish Catholic) dressed up a stool as an altar, with a crucifix in the middle, St. Antonio on one side, and St. I know not who on the other, and before these idols she and her husband and the whole family were kneeling and praying while the firing continued. This poor woman actually died of fear.—In the Memoires d’un Soldat the Mamalukes are said to have made a great slaughter that day. One of them breaking into a house from which a musket had been fired, was run through with a sword by a very beautiful girl, who was immediately cut down by his companions. A man who got his livelihood by the chase, and was an unerring shot, expended eight and twenty cartridges upon the French, bringing down a man with each; when his ammunition was spent, he armed himself with a dagger, and rushing against a body of the enemy, fought till the last gasp.