Note 23 — Chapter XXXII

The under-gardener of the Botanical Garden at Coimbra, with his family, consisting of his wife (a young woman of eighteen, with an infant at the breast) and her mother, having tarried too long to accompany the army, was overtaken in the little town of Soure by some stragglers from the enemy’s advanced guard, who were in search of plunder. These miscreants secured the husband by fastening his hands behind him: they tied the mother in the same manner; the villain then, to whom the wife was allotted, either by agreement among them, or by virtue of his authority, endeavoured to tear the infant from her arms, that he might proceed to violate her in presence of her mother and her husband. Failing in this, and enraged at a resistance which he had not expected, he drew back a few yards, presented his musket, and swore he would fire at her if she did not yield. “Fire, devil!” was her immediate reply, and at the word she and her infant fell by the same shot. The ruffians stripped her body, and compelled the husband to carry the clothes on his back to Thomar, whither they carried him prisoner. During his detention there he pointed out the murderer to a Portugueze nobleman then serving with Massena; but whatever this traitor may have felt at the crime, he did not venture to report it to the French commander, and demand justice upon the criminal: the hopes of co-operation on the part of the Portugueze people which he had held out had been proved so utterly false, that Massena treated him with contemptuous dislike, and moreover every thing was permitted to their soldiers by the French generals in that atrocious campaign. The gardener effected his escape to Coimbra, where a subscription was raised for him, but he soon died, broken-hearted. The man himself related this tragedy to the British officer, from whom I received it. It is recorded here as an example of the spirit which the invaders frequently found in those Portugueze women who were unfortunate enough to fall into their hands.