THE MAID OF SARAGOSSA.

THE city of Saragossa unfurled the royal standard of the Bourbons early in the year 1808; Napoleon at once dispatched General Lefèvre to reduce the rebellious capital. It was not in a situation to sustain a siege; its defences consisted of an illconstructed wall, twelve feet high and three broad, its continuity interrupted from time to time by a crumbling house, originally, perhaps, a fort or an arsenal, but now dilapidated by the effects of time and neglect. The neighboring churches, convents and public buildings were all in too ruinous a condition to be serviceable in repelling the assailants. The city was populous, containing fifty thousand inhabitants, but among them there were but two hundred and twenty regular soldiers; and the entire artillery, when collected and prepared for action, consisted of sixteen old and inefficient cannon. A hill, called El Torrero, overlooked the city at the distance of a mile, and upon this commanding site the French planted a portion of their siege-train and batteries.

They commenced their operations in a careless but confident manner, well aware of the slender resources of the city, and asserting that it was inhabited by priests, cowards and women. They did not dream that this city of cowards was to make the

most desperate and heroic resistance known in the annals of warfare, and that from among the women of whom they thus lightly spoke, was to arise a deliverer for the Spaniards. For months the invaders were repulsed at each successive assault; the besieged endured every misery and made every sacrifice which it was possible for patriotism to suggest or heroism to achieve. On the second of June, a Saragossan, bribed by French gold, fired a powder magazine within the walls. The inhabitants, involved in the falling ruins, stunned and bewildered by the explosion and the conflagration that ensued, were paralyzed and powerless; the French pushed their troops forward to the gates. A massacre rather than a battle followed; the ramparts were choked with dead bodies, and defence seemed no longer possible.

"At this desperate moment," we are told, "an unknown maiden issued from the church of Nuestra Señora del Pilar, habited in white raiment, a cross suspended from her neck, her dark hair dishevelled, and her eyes sparkling with supernatural lustre. She traversed the city with a bold and firm step; she passed to the rampart, to the very spot where the enemy were pouring in to the assault; she mounted to the breach, seized a lighted match from the hand of a dying engineer, and fired the piece of artillery he had failed to discharge. Then, kissing her cross, she cried, 'Death or Victory!' and reloaded her cannon. Such a cry, such a vision, could hardly fail to awaken enthusiasm; it seemed that heaven had brought aid to the just cause; her cry was answered-'Viva Agostina!' and the French were driven back."

Southey, in his "Peninsular War," gives the following description of the same scene: "The sand bag battery before the gate was frequently destroyed, and as often reconstructed under the fire of the enemy. The carnage here throughout the day was dreadful. Agostina Zaragoz, a handsome woman of the lower class, about twenty-two years of age, arrived at this battery with

refreshments, at the time when not a man who defended it was left alive, so tremendous was the fire which the French kept up against it. For a moment the citizens hesitated to re-man the guns. Agostina sprang forward over the dead and dying, snatched a match from the hands of a dead artilleryman, and fired off a six-and-twenty pounder; then jumping upon the gun, made a solemn vow never to quit it alive during the siege. The Zaragozans rushed into the battery; the French were repulsed here and at all other points with great slaughter."

General Lefèvre, mortified at this reverse, resolved to reduce Saragossa by famine, while harassing it by bombardment from El Torrero. The horrors of these measures were somewhat alleviated to the inhabitants by the intrepidity, omnipresence and benevolence of Agostina. She visited and tended the wounded, encountering every species of danger to rescue men and women from tumbling walls or exploding bombs. She supplied food to the sick and starving. But in the meantime, the French had, step by step, rendered themselves masters of half the city, and Lefèvre, confident that the hour of triumph had arrived, sent to Palafox, the Spanish general, the following laconic summons to surrender: "Head-Quarters, Santa Engracia: Capitulation." Palafox received this dispatch in public, and turning to Agostina, who stood near, asked her what answer he should return. Making her words his own, he replied with equal laconicism: "HeadQuarters, Zaragoza: War to the knife." Nothing in the history of war, says the writer whom we have quoted, has ever been recorded to resemble the consequences of this refusal to surrender. One row of houses in a street would be occupied by the Spanish, the opposite row by the French. A continual tempest of balls rent the air; the town was a volcano; the most revolting butchery was carried on for eleven days and eleven nights. Every street, every house, was disputed with musket and poignard. Agostina sped from rank to rank, everywhere taking the most active part. The French were gradually driven back, and

the dawn of the 17th of August saw them relinquish their longdisputed prey and take the road to Pampeluna.

Saragossa," says Wordsworth, in his Convention of Cintra, "has exemplified a melancholy, yea, a dismal truth, yet consolatory and full of joy, that when a people are called suddenly to fight for their liberty and are sorely pressed upon, their best field of battle is the floors upon which their children have played; the chambers where the family of each man has slept; upon or under the roofs by which they have been sheltered; in the gardens of their recreation; in the street or in the market-place ; before the altars of their temples, and among their congregated dwellings, blazing or uprooted."

Palafox, after rendering proper funeral honors to the combatants who had perished, endeavored to recompense the few who survived. He bade Agostina choose her own reward, promising, in the name of the city, that her request, whatever it might be, should be cheerfully granted. She modestly asked to retain the rank she had usurped, that of an engineer of artillery. She was at once made a sub-lieutenant, and was authorized to wear the arms of Saragossa. She was known thenceforward as Agostina Zaragoz, or the Maid of Saragossa.

In November of the same year, the siege was renewed by the French under Marshals Moncey and Mortier. The place was invested, all the outworks were carried, and a furious bombardment ensued. The besieged fought with desperate valor, Agostina now tending the wounded, and now aiding in manning the batteries. She took her former station at the Portillo, with the same cannon she had served before; and once said to Palafox, as he was passing, "See, General, I am with my old friend." She frequently headed assaulting parties, sword or knife in hand. Though constantly exposed, she was never wounded. She was once, however, nearly suffocated by being thrown into a ditch and covered with bodies of the dead and dying. The general assault was made on the 27th of January, 1809, and the French