[360] Napier, ii. 322.
[361] Napoleon to Berthier, Correspondance, May 29, 1810.
[362] To please the Catalans, who hated the idea of long service, the enlistment in the Legions was made for two years only, and the men were to be entitled to fifteen days’ leave during each half-year of service.
[363] Though not always. See the case of the revenue from the quicksilver mines, in Correspondance, no. 17,076.
[364] Cf. ibid., July 10, to Soult.
[365] There was desperate quarrelling with Madrid when Soult tried to get hold of the port-revenues—small as these were, owing to the English blockade—and when he tried to nominate consuls on his own authority. See Ducasse’s Correspondance du Roi Joseph, vol. vii. p. 337.
[366] 3rd and 4th Chasseurs à Cheval, both present at Albuera and other fights in Estremadura in 1810-12. They seem to have gone to pieces on the evacuation of Andalusia in the autumn of 1812.
[367] Cazadores de Jaen, Francos de Montaña, &c. There was a company of this sort in Badajoz when it was taken in 1812. The Spanish government shot the officers after trial by court martial.
[368] Cf. Observations by his aide-de-camp St. Chamans, in his Memoirs, pp. 203-5, as to the Marshal’s administration. It may serve as an example of the liberal way in which the superior officers were allowed to draw in money, that Soult gave his ex-aide-de-camp 1,500 francs a month, when he was commanding in the town of Carmona, besides his pay and free food and quarters. It is small wonder that he and other governors began, as he said, ‘à trancher du grand seigneur.’ Cf. Arteche, viii. 109, for Spanish views on Soult’s administration.
[369] There is a good account of the desperate life of the garrison of Matagorda during the bombardment in the Eventful Life of a Scottish Soldier, by Sergeant Donaldson of the 94th.