trouble and disorder at the taking of Tarragona. According to certain
fair-minded military men, this intoxication of victory bore a striking
resemblance to pillage, though the marechal promptly suppressed it.
Order being re-established, each regiment quartered in its respective
lines, and the commandant of the city appointed, military
administration began. The place assumed a mongrel aspect. Though all
things were organized on a French system, the Spaniards were left free
to follow "in petto" their national tastes.

This period of pillage (it is difficult to determine how long it
lasted) had, like all other sublunary effects, a cause, not so
difficult to discover. In the marechal's army was a regiment, composed
almost entirely of Italians and commanded by a certain Colonel Eugene,
a man of remarkable bravery, a second Murat, who, having entered the
military service too late, obtained neither a Grand Duchy of Berg nor
a Kingdom of Naples, nor balls at the Pizzo. But if he won no crown he
had ample opportunity to obtain wounds, and it was not surprising that
he met with several. His regiment was composed of the scattered
fragments of the Italian legion. This legion was to Italy what the
colonial battalions are to France. Its permanent cantonments,
established on the island of Elba, served as an honorable place of
exile for the troublesome sons of good families and for those great
men who have just missed greatness, whom society brands with a hot
iron and designates by the term "mauvais sujets"; men who are for the
most part misunderstood; whose existence may become either noble
through the smile of a woman lifting them out of their rut, or
shocking at the close of an orgy under the influence of some damnable
reflection dropped by a drunken comrade.

Napoleon had incorporated these vigorous beings in the sixth of the