While the preparations for [the levy of fresh troops] were in progress, the liberals of Barcelona outdid even their former crimes by the perpetration of still more revolting horrors. The details of this insurrection show that it was not a sudden ebullition of popular frenzy, but the work of forethought and previous arrangement.
On the 4th of January 1836, a crowd assembled in the main square, and, with loud imprecations and yells of revenge, demanded the lives of the Carlist prisoners confined in the citadel. Thither they immediately repaired, and, not meeting with the slightest resistance from the garrison, scaled the walls, lowered the drawbridge, and entered the fortress; their leaders holding in their hands lists of those whom they had predetermined to massacre. When the place was completely in their possession, the leaders of the mob began to read over their lists of proscription, and, with as much deliberation as if they had been butchers selecting sheep for the knife, had their miserable victims dragged forward, and shot one after another, in the order of their names. The brave Colonel O’Donnel was the first that perished. His body, and that of another prisoner, were dragged through the streets, with shouts of «Liberty!» The heads and hands were cut off, and the mutilated trunks, after having been exposed to every indignity, were cast upon a burning pile. The head of O’Donnel, after having been kicked about the streets as a foot-ball by wretches who mingled mirth with murder, was at last stuck up in front of a fountain ; and pieces of flesh were cut from his mangled and palpitating body, and eagerly devoured by the vilest and most depraved of women. From the citadel the mob proceeded to the hospital, where three of the inmates were butchered ; and from the hospital to the fort of Atanzares [Atarazanas/Drassanes], where fifteen Carlist peasants shared the same fate. In all, eighty-eight persons perished.
This deliberate massacre of defenceless prisoners, and the worse than fiendish excesses committed on their remains, satisfied the rioters for the first day; but, on the next, they presumed to proclaim that fruitful parent of innumerable murders—the constitution of 1812. This was too much to be borne. Even then, however, two hours elapsed before a dissenting voice was heard; when a note arrived from Captain Hyde Parker, of the Rodney, who not long before, in obedience to the orders of a peaceful administration, had landed fifteen thousand muskets in the city. His offer to support the authorities against the friends of the obnoxious constitution was not without effect. The leaders of the political movement were allowed to embark on board the Rodney, and the tumult subsided, rather from being lulled than suppressed. No punishment whatever was inflicted on the murderers and cannibals of the first day ; their conduct, perhaps, was not considered to deserve any.