Note 214 — RETREAT FROM BURGOS.

“The Spaniards, civil and military, began to evince hatred of the British. Daily did they attempt or perpetrate murder; and one act of peculiar atrocity merits notice. A horse, led by an English soldier, being frightened, backed against a Spanish officer commanding at a gate; he caused the soldier to be dragged into his guard-house and there bayonetted him in cold blood; and no redress could be had for this or other crimes save by counter violence, which was not long withheld. A Spanish officer, while wantonly stabbing at a rifleman, was shot dead by the latter; and a British volunteer slew a Spanish officer at the head of his own regiment in a sword fight, the troops of both nations looking on; but here there was nothing dishonourable on either side.”—Napier.

“Two of the handsomest men of the light company, M’Cann and Ludley, were billeted in a house containing a mother and her daughter, when one evening a Spaniard came in and invited them to take some wine with him, during which, it is supposed, in a fit of jealousy, he took the opportunity of stabbing them both to the heart. The assassin made his escape before the alarm could be given, as also did the mother and daughter; but our men were so exasperated, that they attacked the house, and in twenty minutes there was not one stone left upon another.”—Cadell.