[50] ‘Sa Majesté (writes Berthier) pense que, dans cette circonstance, vous avez plus calculé votre gloire personnelle que le bien de son service,’ Jan. 23, letter quoted above on the last page.
[51] Each division had about 4,000 or 4,500 men: the light cavalry about 1,700, so the whole would have made about 10,000 sabres and bayonets.
[52] Apparently four or five battalions of the German division gathered from La Mancha, and a brigade of dragoons. Joseph calls it in his Correspondance 3,000 men, when describing this operation (Joseph to Berthier, Nov. 12, 1811).
[53] D’Armagnac’s obscure campaign will be found chronicled in detail in the narrative of the Baden officer, Riegel, iii. pp. 357-60, who shared in it along with the rest of the German division from La Mancha.
[54] So Suchet’s narrative (Mémoires, ii. pp. 214-15). Belmas says that only one bridge was finished when Harispe and Musnier passed—the others after dawn only.
[55] For Blake’s opinions and actions see the record of his staff-officer, Schepeler (pp. 502-3).
[56] Napier says (iv. p. 30) that the gunboats fled without firing a shot. Suchet and Schepeler speak of much firing, as does Arteche.
[57] No less than three of the Italian colonels were hit, and thirty-four officers in all.
[58] Only Miranda voted against a sortie, and thought that nothing could be done, except to hold out for a while in the walls and then surrender. Arteche, xi. p. 241.
[59] Not 5,000 as Napier (probably by a misprint) says on page 31 of his 4th vol. Apparently a misprint in the original edition has been copied in all the later fourteen!