The General after breakfast complains to the assembled authorities of the town that the men are not received with sufficient friendship, and that it may have a bad effect on the minds of the soldiers. The 20th Regiment marches to Zarza, and Colonel Beckwith with the 95th marches in.
Bridge of Alcantara.
The Benedictine church is extremely fine inside; the bare stone in Gothic arches extremely grand. We view the bridge. Nothing can exceed it. Its venerable air, as well as the inscription over the triumphal arch, declare its structure of antiquity. It was built by the Emperor Trajan, and is about 150 feet high, stretching from mountain to mountain. The stones are immense, and of nearly equal size, with all the roundness of time’s rubbing. Standing on the bed of the river and catching the wild mountains through the enormous arches, it appears like the Bridge of Sin and Death striding over chaos. The piers seem to have been exceedingly well clamped, and there is a triumphal arch in the centre of the bridge. I should think it as fine and perfect a Roman relique as any that exists, and being in this country it involves a number of inferences very interesting to the antiquary and historian. I wish some of them could see it. There is a striking grandeur of rude yet elegant simplicity in this structure which must always have rendered it most imposing; but that very venerable air that the whole has acquired, from each great stone being mouldered by time, until there are wide joints between them, and the whole inexpressible shade cast over it by a thousand years, give it an impression on the mind (while the light clouds dance over the top of the arch) that is not to be described.
Alcantara, November 5, 1808.
My ever dearest Dad—The advanced division of the Army under General Paget is now moving onwards by the shortest route towards Burgos from the Alemtejo. The roads along the frontier into the north of Spain by Alcantara, Ciudad Rodrigo, etc., are so bad that all the artillery on the south side or left bank of the Tagus is moving on by the high road to Madrid. The rest will go from Lisbon to Almeida, and so on.
There has been a very irksome interval between the knowledge of our destined entry into Spain and the commencement of the march.
The rainy season appears to have commenced, but I devoutly hope that its effects will not be great before the arrival of this division at Ciudad Rodrigo, from which place I believe the roads are not liable to be broken up by bad weather.
If we get in time upon the theatre of war, the British Army has every reason to be sanguine. I believe there is no man in the Army who is not confident in Sir John Moore. He has under him as generals as fine ardent fellows as ever breathed, and I believe his particular attached friends. Then the troops are the best quality of British troops, which is as much praise as can be given. So if Buonaparte himself with 50,000 Frenchmen of his best bands will please to oppose himself to the British corps of the Allied Army, we can wish no more. I shall take care that you get a line from me as often as is possible.
I rambled a good deal about this part of the country before the division moved, and had some curious adventures. I have been fortunate enough to get an invaluable servant, who is an excellent cook, interpreter, and travelling companion, of tried fidelity and diligence, and more entertaining and conversable on the road than Sancho was with Don Quixote in the same relations and in the same country. I have completed my stud for forty guineas. Two chargers and a baggage pony make my establishment, and in these I have been so fortunate that I would spurn sixty guineas for them, and was offered twenty-five for one that cost me fifteen the other day. However, by the end of the campaign I expect I shall have taken out of them a little of their worth.