Salamanca merits particular notice and attention. The church magnificent, and the door of the cathedral the richest, most superb thing I ever saw.
November 29.—Anxiety prevails about the Allies, and I receive orders late in the day to accompany Colonel Offeney on an excursion.
November 30.—We start at six, and after passing Tormerellas meet a sickly-looking man on horseback, whom we stop. He appears a good deal frightened, and confesses to have conducted thirty dragoons to Pedroso. He also delivers up certain papers—a requisition for 50,000 rations of bread and 10,000 of forage; a paper from Besseares to the Spanish people; and another, a bulletin from the grand army, announcing the total defeat of Castanos, which, added to that of Blake and La Romano, left nothing of a Spanish army but a small corps in the rear of the enemy under Palafax. Send this fellow with his papers to headquarters.
Start again, and having learned that the enemy had abandoned Pedroso, proceed thither, and find they had left the town two hours before our arrival. It was thought they had merely withdrawn into a wood a mile beyond, into which it was not deemed prudent to penetrate.
It appeared they had come for information, asking after us; and hearing that we had 24,000 in Salamanca, they said, “It was nothing; they had 40,000, and would soon settle us.”
December 1.—Enter the wood with some precaution, and strike off to the left, crossing the stagnant Guareña to some houses, and are induced to believe that the French have gone back to Fresno.
Strike to the right to Villa Fuente, a short league distant. Then return to Pitiegua, and sleep at the house of the excellent curé, having made a hideous dinner upon nothing.
December 2.—Start for Mollorido, a mill on the road to Valladolid, and the next day receive intelligence that 10,000 infantry and 2000 cavalry have marched towards Segovia.
Go again to Tarazona, and meet on the edge of the wood the servant of the Bishop of Coimbra on his way home from Bourdeaux. The Bishop was one of the Portuguese grandees sent as hostages to France, and the servant had been to visit him. He told us that he had both seen and spoken to Napoleon at Burgos, and that he was now at Aranda on his way to Madrid, to which the whole attention of the French seemed now turned, in consequence of the defeat or rout of Castanos.
We send this man with a dragoon to headquarters, and proceed to Mollorido, where we meet some people who advise us of a Don living at Tarazona, a village half a league to the left. Go there, and find Don Jose Mental, who had fled from Rosseda, and here he was in his own farmhouse. We endeavoured to make him a sort of master intelligencer. He promised much, but is actually no great shakes. Leaving him, we return by the sedgy banks of the wild poolly Guareña. I rode ahead with the guide, and whenever we came to a pool he gave a shuddering look thereon, and looking at me and shaking his head, said it was a terrible place, and whoever went in never came out again. This was his impression, as he could not swim, and had probably never been immersed in his life; to me it was no more than a deep pool.