In this dreadful warfare blood called for blood; cruelty produced retaliation, and retaliation was retaliated by fresh cruelties. Eight of the Empecinado’s men were taken in the Guadarrama mountains, and nailed to the trees there, for the purpose of intimidating their fellows: such a spectacle had the sure effect of exasperating them, and the same number of Frenchmen were soon nailed to the same trees, in the same spirit of inhuman vengeance.
A lieutenant of his party, Mesa by name, went over to the French, and engaged to bring them the head of this dreaded partisan; his interest was so good, and his proposals so plausible, that they gave him the rank of captain in one of the Spanish regiments which the Intruder was raising, and sent him with a company of 200 Spanish cavalry to perform his promise; when they came near Guadalaxara, the men put him to death, and joined their countrymen in arms. Such an example might have taught Joseph and his ministers how little they could depend upon the Spaniards, who by misery, or severe usage, were forced into his service. Half naked and ill-fed, kept in miserable prisons, or at the hardest work, upon the canals, where such work was at hand, winter and summer, sometimes up to the middle in water, they enlisted with the determination of making their escape. In the course of five months not less than 12,000 entered with this purpose; and on the first opportunity that offered, whole companies, including the officers, deserted, with arms and baggage. The celebrity of the Empecinado encouraged them to these attempts, and his movements in the vicinity of Madrid facilitated their escape. Like the other distinguished guerrilla leaders, he soon obtained rank from the national Government, but he looked to it neither for pay nor supplies. ♦JUNTA OF GUADALAXARA.♦ The Junta of Guadalaxara used the utmost exertions to assist him; the members of this Junta performed their duty with perfect fidelity in a situation where they were continually in extreme danger, from the vicinity of a strong enemy’s force. They were as often in the woods and wilds as in human habitations, and yet they collected stores, clothing, and money for the armies, while in this state of outlawry under the intrusive Government; and they circulated a newspaper which they printed in the mountains near the sources of the Tagus.