Having thus lured Wilson away from the passes, the French general suddenly broke up by night, and made a forced march for the Puerto de Perales, the nearest mountain-road to Alcantara. He thus obtained a full day’s start, and got off unmolested. Sir Robert and Carlos d’España followed on his track as soon as they discovered his departure, and Mayne also pursued, from the Puerto de Baños, but none of them could do more than harass his rearguard, with which they skirmished for three days in the passes. It would not have been wise of them to attempt more, even if they could have got into touch with the main body, for the French division was double their strength. Meanwhile the peasantry of the Sierra de Gata endeavoured to stop Lapisse’s progress, by blocking the defiles; but he swept them away with ease, and they never succeeded in delaying him for more than a few hours. Their incessant ‘sniping’ and night attacks exasperated the French, who dealt most ruthlessly with the country-side as they passed. When they arrived at Alcantara, and found the little town barricaded, they not only refused all quarter to the fighting-men when they stormed the place, but committed dreadful atrocities on the non-combatants. Not only murder and rape but mutilation and torture are reported by credible witnesses[311]. After the houses had been sacked, the very tombs in the churches were broken open in search of plunder. Leaving Alcantara full of corpses and ruins [April 12], the division marched on by Caceres and joined Victor in his camp near Merida[312] [April 19].
[311] It is impossible to make out why Alcantara was treated so much worse than other places taken by storm, but the facts are well vouched for. The report of the local authorities to Cuesta says that not only all peasants taken with arms in their hands, but more than forty non-combatants were butchered, and that not a woman who had remained in the place escaped rape. Lillie, the historian of the Lusitanian Legion, who was with the force that pursued Lapisse from Rodrigo, says that he saw the traces of ‘acts of barbarity that would disgrace the most savage and uncivilized of mankind’--corpses deliberately mutilated and laid out to roast on piles of burning furniture, with the bodies of domestic animals, such as pigs and dogs, placed on the top of the pile as if in jest [_Lusitanian Legion_, pp. 66-7]. The German historian Schepeler gives very similar details, adding the note about the dragging up of bones and coffins from the churches.