[170] Wellington to Lord Liverpool, Jan. 1, Dispatches, viii. p. 524.
[171] See Wellington to Graham, Dec. 26, Dispatches, viii. p. 521.
[172] Wellington to Lord Liverpool, Dispatches, viii. p. 524.
[173] Another extract from the explanatory dispatch to Lord Liverpool, written on Jan. 1st, 1812.
[174] For details of this see Thiébault’s Mémoires, iv. p. 537, where Barrié’s frank dismay at his appointment, and the arguments used to overcome it, are described at length.
[175] Wellington to Liverpool, Dispatches, viii. p. 536, Jan. 7th, 1812, ‘I can scarcely venture to calculate the time that this operation will take, but I should think not less than twenty-four or twenty-five days.’
[176] Kincaid, Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, p. 104.
[177] I take Colborne’s own account (see letter in his life by Moore Smith, p. 166). There were two companies each from the 1/43rd, 1/52nd, 2/52nd, and 95th, and one from each Caçador battalion. Jones wrongly says (p. 116) three companies of the 52nd only, Napier (as usual) omits all mention of the Portuguese. Cf. Harry Smith’s Autobiography, i. p. 55.
[178] In Moorsom’s History of the 52nd it is stated that a sergeant of the French artillery, while in the act of throwing a live shell, was shot dead: the shell fell back within the parapet, and was kicked away by one of the garrison, on which it rolled down into the gorge, was stopped by the gate, and then exploded and blew it open (p. 152).
[179] So Belmas, iv. p. 266. Barrié’s report says that there were 60 infantry and 13 gunners inside altogether. It is an accurate and very modest narrative, in which there is nothing to correct.