ined on the field of battle, and General Loison,
pursuing the remainder of these wretches, entered Guerda with fixed
bayonets.' On approaching Alpedrinha, they found the _rebels_ posted in
a kind of redoubt--'it was forced, the town of Alpedrinha taken, and
delivered to the flames:' the whole of this tragedy is thus summed
up--'In the engagements fought in these different marches, we lost
twenty men killed, and 30 or 40 wounded. The insurgents have left at
least 13000 dead in the field, the melancholy consequence of a frenzy
which nothing can justify, which forces us to multiply victims, whom we
lament and regret, but whom a terrible necessity obliges us to
sacrifice.' 'It is thus,' continues the writer, 'that deluded men,
ungrateful children as well as culpable citizens, exchange all their
claims to the benevolence and protection of Government for misfortune
and wretchedness; ruin their families; carry into their habitations
desolation, conflagrations, and death; change flourishing cities into
heaps of ashes--into vast tombs; and bring on their whole country
calamities which they deserve, and from which (feeble victims!) they
cannot escape. In fine, it is thus that, covering themselves with
opprobrium and ridicule at the same time that they complete their
destruction, they have no other resource but the pity of those they have
wished to assassinate--a pity which they never have implored in vain,
when acknowledging their crime, they have solicited pardon from
Frenchmen, who, incapable of departing from their noble character, are
ever as generous as they are brave.'--By order of Monseigneur le duc
d'Abrantes, Commander in chief.'--Compare this with the Address of
Massaredo to the Biscayans, in which there is the like avowal that the
Spaniards are to be treated as Rebels. He tells them, that he is
commanded by his master, Joseph Bonaparte, to assure them--'that, in
case they disapprove of the insurrection in the City of Bilboa, his
majesty will consign to oblivion the mistake and error of the
Insurgents, and that he will punish only the heads and beginners of the
insurrection, with regard to whom _the law must take its course_.'

To be the victim of such bloody-mindedness is a doleful lot for a
Nation; and the anguish must have been rendered still more poignant by
the scoffs and insults, and by that heinous contempt of the most awful
truths, with which the Perpetrator of those cruelties has proclaimed
them.--Merciless fer