[339] Ninety-eight sick attended by sixteen surgeons were comprised in the surrender on April 15th.
[340] This is Lapéne’s view, who says that the 400 gallant men were knowingly sacrificed in this hope: ‘L’intérêt de l’armée a demandé le sacrifice’ (p. 146).
[341] Dickson’s Journals, recently published by Major Leslie, R.A., are the first and most important source in which to study the two early British sieges of Badajoz, as well as the smaller matter of Olivenza. I am using them perpetually all through the following pages.
[342] This date is that given by D’Urban’s Journal.
[343] Dispatches, vii. 407. From Gouvea, March 27.
[344] Dickson, in his Journal, p. 448, specially mentions this curious fact, and notes the name of Philip III and the dates 1620, 1636, 1646, 1652 on some of the guns he used.
[345] These were the companies of Bredin, Baynes, Raynsford, and Glubb; see vol. iii. p. 559.
[346] Dickson, Journal, pp. 405, 448.
[347] Long says that the 13th took about 150 prisoners (Vindication, p. 104), but the French accounts do not acknowledge anything like such loss.
[348] D’Urban visited Ballasteros’s camp on the 14th and settled with him all the details of a joint march against Maransin (whom they wrongly supposed to be d’Aremberg, not knowing that the latter had returned to Seville with the cavalry). ‘If d’Aremberg takes the bait, and follows Ballasteros, he must be lost altogether; even if he halts at Xeres we ought to get hold of him,’ writes D’Urban in his diary. But Maransin fled on the morning of the 15th.