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 of the Spaniards covered the land with scenes, on the details of which it is shocking to dwell.