“‘I want a thousand measures of wheat.’
“‘Senhor Excellenza, the crops have been miserably deficient, and——’
“‘Sergeant-major,’ I would say, ‘these poor people have no corn; it’s a wine country,—let them make up the rations that way.’
“The wheat came in that evening.
“‘One hundred and twenty bullocks wanted for the reserve.’
“‘The cattle are all up the mountains.’
“‘Let the alcalde catch them before night or I’ll catch him.’
“Lord bless you! I had beef enough to feed the Peninsula. And in this way, while the forces were eating short allowance and half rations elsewhere, our brigade were plump as aldermen.
“When we lay in Andalusia this was easy enough. What a country, to be sure! Such vineyards, such gardens, such delicious valleys, waving with corn and fat with olives; actually, it seemed a kind of dispensation of Providence to make war in. There was everything you could desire; and then, the people, like all your wealthy ones, were so timid, and so easily frightened, you could get what you pleased out of them by a little terror. My scouts managed this very well.
“‘He is coming,’ they would say, ‘after to-morrow.’