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    The very atmosphere was impregnated with disease ; and the ordinary morning salutation of officer to officer was— " Well , who else is dead V The medical staff was almost utterly inefficient ; the members of it , then few in number , were almost

    all at the same time lying ill with fever , and those who remained on duty were unable to contend with the difficulties they had to meet with . The Spanish authorities refused them every description of assistance ; the men in hospital wanted bedding , —none was to be obtained : the windows of the corridors in the

    wretched convents , which were converted into hospitals , required to be glazed—nothing of the kind was allowed ; and there lay the miserable sick on the stone or mud floors , covered with vermin , with scarcely a rag of a blanket to share between half a dozen of them ; their heads laid against the wall

    throbbing with fever heat , and their naked feet exposed , underneath the open windows , which looked down into the quadrangle or court-yard , to the bitter inclemency and piercing cold of the night air . Hence , when most of the unhappy sufferers began to rally from under the immediate clanger of the fever itself , their feet mortified , many of them died , and a large

    proportion of those who survived lost their toes and feet , either by nature itself throwing off the dead parts , or by amputation . The mortality was such that for weeks thirty and forty were buried daily . Their bodies were thrown indiscriminately into a cart , and carried to the place of interment , which was a large hole

    dug in the ground , into which they were precipitated , load after load , and which remained open until sufficiently filled to allow of its being easily covered over with earth . When officers died , it was at first attempted to bury them with military honours , and the usual " dead march " accompanied the procession ; so common , however , did this soon become , that the little children

    in the streets caught the air of the dirge , and it was affecting to hear them humming , singing , and drumming it to themselves with sticks , as they played with each other at the steps of the street doors . The most g loomy imagination cannot conceive the melancholy impression which brooded over every mind ; but humanity forbids our enlarging upon details which

    must excite a shudder of horror in every breast . Alas ! that the remains of so many of our fellow countrymen should now lie mouldering in the ungrateful dust of Spain—their graves , like those of the Hernhiiters , in so short a space of time being level and undistinguishable from the surface of the surrounding

    earth . But to return to such excitement as the military movements of the Legion , * 'few and far between , " afforded : —on the 16 th January , 1836 , a grand attack was threatened on the Carlists , and a flourish of trumpets , in the usual melodramatic style of Spanish oratory , proclaimed the victory that was to be

    Untitled Article

    200 The Civil War in Spain .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 1, 1837, page 200, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1830/page/10/