Note 257 — PASSAGE OF THE BIDASSAO.

In October, the garrison were put upon an allowance of four ounces of horseflesh each man. In a week that too failed; every domestic animal had been consumed; rats were eagerly sought for, and weeds supplied the place of vegetables. A feeble sally was made upon the 10th, but it was repulsed with a loss of eighty men. Disease generally accompanies famine—scurvy broke out—a thousand men were reported to be in the hospital, as many were wounded, and death and desertion had lessened the garrison by six hundred. In these desperate circumstances, Cassan, the governor, sent out to offer a surrender, provided he was allowed to retire into France with six pieces of artillery. A peremptory rejection of this condition was followed by a proposition that the soldiers should not serve for a year. This, too, being refused, it was intimated to the Spanish general, that after blowing up the works, Cassan would imitate Brennier, and trust to fortune and gallantry for the deliverance of his exhausted garrison. This proceeding on the part of the French governor was so repugnant to the rules of war, that a letter was conveyed to his advanced post, denouncing the attempt as inhuman, involving in a desperate experiment the destruction of unfortunate beings who had already borne the horrors of a siege, with an assurance that, should it be attempted, the governor and officers would be shot, and the private soldiers decimated. Most probably the threat of mining the city had been merely used to obtain more favourable terms, and neither the abominable experiment was made, nor the terrible retaliation which would have followed was required. On the 31st the garrison surrendered, and the finest fortress on the Peninsula became thus a bloodless conquest.