Three or four large houses were on fire—two of them were in the market-place—and the streets were illuminated by the flames.
The soldiers were growing very drunk, and many of them for amusement were firing from the windows into the streets.
“I was myself talking to the barber Evans in the square, when a ball passed through his head. This was at one o’clock in the morning. He fell at my feet dead, and his brains lay on the pavement. I then sought shelter, and found Colonel McLeod with a few officers in a large house, where we remained until the morning.
“I did not enter any other house in Ciudad Rodrigo. If I had not seen it, I never could have supposed that British soldiers would become so wild and furious.
“It was quite alarming to meet groups of them in the streets, flushed as they were with drink, and desperate in mischief, singing, yelling, dealing blows at man, woman, or child like so many mad things loose from Bedlam.
“In the morning the scene was dismal and dreary. The fires were just going out; all over street and square were lying the corpses of many men who had met their death hours after the town had been taken.
“At eleven o’clock I went to look at the great breach. The ascent was not so steep as that of the small one, but there was a traverse thrown up at each side of it on the rampart. I counted ninety-three men of the Third Division lying dead on the rampart between the traverses. I did not see one dead man on the French side of those traverses.
“I saw General McKinnon lying dead. He was on his back just under the rampart. He had, I think, rushed forward and fallen down the perpendicular wall, probably at the moment of receiving his mortal wound. He was stripped of everything except his shirt and blue pantaloons; even his boots were taken off.
“There were no others dead near him, and he was not on the French side either. It is said that he was blown up, but I should say not. There was no appearance indicating that such had been his fate. Neither his skin nor the posture in which he was lying led me to suppose it. When a man is blown up, his hands and face, I should think, could not escape. McKinnon’s face was pale and free from the marks of fire. How strange! but with his exception I did not see a man of the Third Division who had been stripped.”