A body of Spaniards under a captain was stationed on our right. We had a corporal and file with them, merely to give us intelligence if necessary. When the firing commenced the Spaniards became very uneasy; the officer wished our corporal to leave his post; he said he was determined to wait until the enemy overpowered him, so the noble Castilian and his forces started off. Two French officers, a Light Infantry captain and a subaltern, and seventeen men lay stretched upon the rough ground. We afterwards heard from a deserter that the colonel who led the attack was shot through the mouth and his jaw broken. He was making a great noise before, but this circumstance made him so quiet that a child might have played with him. Several other officers were wounded and a number of men who were carried off during the affray, Lieutenant Mercer killed, seventeen of our men killed and wounded. Fairfoot was of the party taken; Betts, the sergeant, wounded in the jaw; O'Gallagher wounded and died; William David, his skull blown off and his dura mater exposed. A French sergeant was wounded through the knee, and afterwards I assisted Surgeon Burke to remove his leg. This being the first affair of the outposts, and it having resulted in the total discomfiture of the enemy in his midnight attack, the following Complimentary Order was issued on the occasion:—
Division Orders
Brigadier-General Craufurd has it in command from the Commander-in-Chief to assure Lieutenant-Colonel Beckwith and the officers of the 95th Regiment who were engaged at Barba del Puerco that their conduct in this affair has augmented the confidence he has in the troops when opposed to the enemy in any situation. Brigadier-General Craufurd feels peculiar pleasure in noticing the first affair in which any part of the Light Brigade were engaged during the present campaign. That British troops should defeat a superior number of the enemy is nothing new, but the action reflects honour on Lieutenant-Colonel Beckwith and the Regiment, inasmuch that it was of a sort that Rifle Men of other Armies would shun. In other Armies the Rifle is considered ill calculated for close action with an enemy armed with Musket and Bayonet, but the 95th Regiment has proved that the Rifle in the hands of a British soldier is a fully efficient weapon to enable him to defeat the French in the closest fight in whatever manner they may be armed.
(Signed) T. Graham, D.A.G.
This night gave me a good opinion of myself. I fought alone for some time with fearful odds, my friend dead at my feet. I had been often joked and told, "Would you not like to be at home again?" After this night I was considered a soldier fit to face the devil in any shape.
21st
Another attack being expected from the enemy, two more companies of Rifle Men marched in, also two of the 52nd and one of the 43rd Light Infantry.
23rd
This post being frequently cut off in rainy weather by a river which ran in our rear becoming so swollen that it was impossible to ford it for days together, our General withdrew us, and sent a piquet of the 1st German Hussars as a look-out post; we moved into Villar de Ciérvos. A few days before we left the post of Barba del Puerco a deserter wanted to come to us, but the river ran so furiously that he durst not cross it. Some Spaniards who were hiding from the French observed him, and did not know his wishes, but seeing this Frenchman without arms and unsupported, deliberately stoned him to death, several of us looking on without the power of doing the unfortunate man any service.
1810 April 6th