13. The Struggle to Implement Medicare

‘The sacking of a town is an abomination’: siege, sack and violence to civilians in British officers’ writings on the Peninsular War – the case of Badajoz

“…Robert Blakeney, for example, took some coloured prints from a house he was protecting as a 'trophy of war', later presenting them to an old friend in Galway as the 'sole tangible remembrance of the storming of Badajoz'. 88 There were also some officers who aired the accusation that the sack was partly motivated by vengeance for past slights and inhospitality to the British army. 'The inhabitants did not meet with much compassion', wrote Lieutenant William Stavely at the time, 'as their treatment of the English when quartered here before with some exceptions was not what it ought to have been'.…”