he spot, was cruelly maltreated.
In a moment the whole capital was in an uproar: the French soldiery were
assaulted everywhere--about 700 were slain. The mob attacked the
hospital--the sick and their attendants rushed out and defended it. The
French cavalry, hearing the tumult, entered the city by the gate of
Alcala--a column of 3000 infantry from the other side by the street
Ancha de Bernardo. Some Spanish officers headed the mob, and fired on
the soldiery in the streets of Maravelles: a bloody massacre ensued:
many hundreds were made prisoners: the troops, sweeping the streets from
end to end, released their comrades; and, to all appearance,
tranquillity was restored ere nightfall. During the darkness, however,
the peasantry flocked in armed from the neighbouring country: and, being
met at the gates by the irritated soldiery, not a few more were killed,
wounded, and made prisoners. Murat ordered all the prisoners to be tried
by a military commission, which doomed them to instant death. It is
disputed whether the more deliberate guilt of carrying the sentence into
execution lies with the commander-in-chief himself, or with Grouchy; it
is certain that a considerable number of Spaniards--the English
authority most friendly to the French cause admits
_ninety-five_[58]--were butchered in cold blood on the 3rd of May.

This commotion had been preceded by a brief insurrection, easily
suppressed and not unlikely to be soon forgotten, on the 23rd of April,
at Toledo. The events in the capital were of a more decisive character,
and the amount of the bloodshed, in itself great, was much exaggerated
in the reports which flew, like wildfire, throughout the Peninsula--for
the French were as eager to overawe the provincial Spaniards, by
conveying an overcharged impression of the consequences of resistance,
as their enemies in Madrid were to rouse the general indignation, by
heightened details of the ferocity of the invaders and the sternness of
their own devotion. In almost every town of Spain, and almost
simultaneously, the flame of patriotic resentment broke out in the
terrible form of assassination. The French residents were slaughtered
without mercy: the supposed partisans of Napoleon and Godoy (not a few
men of worth being causelessly confounded in their fate) were sacrificed
in the first tumult of popular rage. At Cadiz, Seville, Carthagena,
above all in Valencia, the streets ran red with blood. The dark and
vindictive temper