Note 248 — SIEGE OF SAN SEBASTIAN

San Sebastian was won. Would that its horrors had ended with its storm! but the scenes that followed were terrible. The sky became suddenly overcast—thunder was heard above the din of battle—and mortal fury mingled with an elemental uproar. Darkness came on; but houses wrapped in flames directed the licentious soldiery to plunder, and acts of violence still more horrible. The storms of Badajoz and Rodrigo were followed by the most revolting excesses; yet they fell infinitely short of those committed after San Sebastian was carried by assault. “Some order was first maintained, but the resolution of the troops to throw off discipline was quickly made manifest. A British staff officer was pursued with a volley of small arms, and escaped with difficulty from men who mistook him for the provost-martial of the 5th division; a Portuguese adjutant, who endeavoured to prevent some atrocity, was put to death in the market-place, not with sudden violence from a single ruffian, but deliberately by a number of English soldiers. Many officers exerted themselves to preserve order: many men were well-conducted, but the rapine and violence commenced by villains soon spread, the camp-followers crowded into the place, and the disorder continued, until the flames following the steps of the plunderer put an end to his ferocity by destroying the whole town.”

“This storm seemed to be the signal of hell for the perpetration of villany which would have shamed the most ferocious barbarians of antiquity. At Ciudad Rodrigo intoxication and plunder had been the principal object; at Badajoz lust and murder were joined to rapine and drunkenness; but at San Sebastian, the direst, the most revolting cruelty was added to the catalogue of crimes. One atrocity, of which a girl of seventeen was the victim, staggers the mind by its enormous, incredible, indescribable barbarity.”—Napier.