SWABEY DIARY. 431 
passing the Guadarrama mountain, which is of immense height and 
easily defended, I began to realize the miseries of the retreat ; 
animals knocked up, men and women failing, and every kind of woe; 
but all I saw made but a slight impression compared to the horrid 
massacre of some unfortunate French prisoners by a Spanish escort, 
who with the utmost composure shot them like dogs. We were not 
near enough to arrest their cursed purpose, but when we remonstrated 
were told that they frequently served them the same, and moreover, 
that they had requested to be shot. Inhuman wretches! They had 
reduced them to despair by starvation, and then thought their deeds 
justified by the desperate request! O cowardly, villainous Spain! too 
proud to take the necessary measures for your own defence, too cruel 
to turn a deaf ear to the dictates of dastardly revenge ! 
We got to Villa-Castin after dark and slept in an empty house after 
a hasty beef-steak. 
Napier’s opinion of the conduct of the Spaniards towards the 
enemy, of which we have had several notable instances, is 
given in Vol. II., p. 407 thus: “ The principal motive of action 
with the Spaniards was always personal rancour; hence, 
those troops who had behaved so ill in action, and the in- 
habitants, who withheld alike their sympathy and their aid 
from the English soldiers to whose bravery they owed the 
existence of their town, were busily engaged after the battle 
[Talavera], in beating out the brains of the wounded French 
as they lay upon the field, and they were only checked by the 
English soldiers, who in some instances, fired upon the 
perpetrators of this horrible iniquity.” 
6th November.—Marched to Martinmufioz, where, with General 
Long’s brigade, we expected to be quiet for a few days, not knowing 
which road the enemy might take, Salamanca or Segovia. 
7th November.—Set off in a hurry ; the brigade lost some baggage 
and we had two men taken prisoners who were employed by the 
commissary. ‘‘he troop marched on and I joined the Hussars with 
my guns and slept all night on the ground in my cloak. 
Sth November.—In the morning joined the troop ; marched all day in 
the rain, and after dark encamped at night on the Salamanca road also 
in the rain. As we could not make the fire burn and had no wine, we 
had little food to eat. 
Ith November.—Marched at day-light and encamped with the whole 
army just at dark at Penaranda. For the last three days the unfor- 
tunate sick, unable to proceed, have been daily falling into the 
hands of the enemy. 
10ih November.—This morning I rode forward into Penaranda to 
buy some cloth, being entirely without clothes; whilst in the shop 
there a cry was raised that the French were coming and the Spanish 
cavalry galloped in disorder through the town. Sutton and I mounted 
our horses and rode our best till clear of the town. I then pulled up 
and with another officer tried to rally the Spaniards. We soon halted 
