♦GOOD EFFECT OF PAYING THE TROOPS REGULARLY.♦
The money which Suchet raised for his military and civil establishments was presently expended in the province, to the immediate benefit of the people upon whom it had been levied. The troops were paid every five days, the civil officers regularly received their salaries, and what they received was necessarily spent in the country. Suchet took care also to purchase there whatever it could supply for the clothing and equipment of the troops, paying for it at once from the contributions; and the active circulation ♦MÉMOIRES DU MARÉSHAL SUCHET, 1. 302.♦ which was thus occasioned, if he may be believed, made the inhabitants themselves sensible that they were gainers by such taxation. He repaired the dykes, the sluices, and the great basin at Mount Torrero which had been destroyed during the siege; the canal was thus again restored: preparations were made for conducting water into the city and erecting fountains there: the hospitals and the bull circus were repaired; bull fights, the national sport and the national reproach, were exhibited; and by these means ... and by his refusal to send the treasure of Our Lady of the Pillar to Madrid, notwithstanding repeated orders to that effect, ... he endeavoured to gratify the Zaragozans, while he erected works about the city to secure it against any sudden attempt. Buonaparte’s orders were not so safely to be disregarded as those of the Intruder; when, ♦BRITISH GOODS BURNT AT ZARAGOZA.♦ therefore, Suchet was instructed to confiscate and burn all the English goods which could be found in Aragon, the general remonstrated against so impolitic a measure, and proposed instead to levy a duty upon such goods of fifty per cent.; but Buonaparte hated England too vehemently to be capable of receiving any advice which opposed the indulgence of that insane passion, and Suchet found it necessary to search the warehouses, and make a bonfire of what he found there, in the _Plaza Mayor_ at Zaragoza, taking care however that the search should be as perfunctory as he could venture to make it, and leaving colonial ♦MÉMOIRES, 1. 306.♦ produce untouched because it happened not to be specified in his orders.