[436] The 51st lost 3 killed and an officer and 20 men wounded: the 68th 2 killed and 6 wounded, the K.G.L. Light Battalions 3 killed and 3 officers and 17 men wounded. There are narratives of the combat in the Memoirs of Green of the 68th, and Major Rice and Private Wheeler of the 51st.
[437] Marmont to Joseph, night of the 22nd June, from bivouac before San Cristobal. Intercepted dispatch in the Scovell Papers.
[438] Jones, i. p. 281.
[439] The regimental history of the 53rd says that the ladders were so badly made, of green wood, that many of them came to pieces in the hands of their carriers long before they got near the fort.
[440] The loss has got exaggerated in many reports, because the casualties in the 7th Division at Morisco on the preceding day are added to the total.
[442] I find the name Ribera de Pelagarcia only in the more modern Spanish maps: contemporary plans do not give it.
[443] Tomkinson, p. 170: ‘Just before they began to retire, I thought that their advance looked serious. Our position was good, and if they had fought with what had crossed, our force would have been the greater.’
[444] This is one of the many cipher dispatches in the Scovell Papers, which I have found so illuminating in a period when Marmont’s writings, printed or in the French archives, are very few.
[445] Jones, Sieges of the Peninsula, i. p. 285.