In the afternoon we returned to our quarters by regiments across the stone bridge, having been relieved by the fifth division, which came from the rear, and took charge of the city.
A few days after the assault, most of the officers of the light division attended General Craufurd's funeral. He was buried under the wall near the small breach.
In a few days we moved from La Encina to El Bodon, where our principal amusement consisted in playing at rackets, with wooden bats, against the side of the church, or riding about the country.
One day we visited the heights about half a league from this place, where, on the previous September, a brigade of the third division had been engaged. Many skeletons of the French horses lay in deep ravines, or on the shelvings of rocks, to the very summit of the ridge, on the crest of which some of the Portuguese gunners were cut down; and where for a short time the cannon remained in the hands of the enemy. It must have been at this moment that the second battalion of the fifth regiment retook them by charging in line, before the enemy's cavalry had time to form. I rode up the ragged ground myself with the utmost difficulty; the ground near the summit was so steep that the Portuguese, while throwing balls into the valley, could not see the advance of the French cavalry until quite upon them. Not that I wish to detract from the deserts of the Portuguese; but, as it has been stated that they stood to their guns to the last, I only wish to demonstrate how it happened. The very print of the wheels of the cannon were still indented in the ground, and showed, to an inch, where they had stood.
The whole of the dead French soldiers lying in the valley were stripped, and in a perfect state of preservation, blanched like parchment by the alternate rain and sunshine; and their skins had become so hard, that the bodies on being touched sounded like a drum. The vultures had picked the bones of the horses perfectly clean, but had left the soldiers untouched; and, although four months had elapsed since they had fallen, their features were as perfect as on the day they were killed. Some of these soldiers were gracefully proportioned, and extended in every possible attitude.
The rubbish of the breaches at Ciudad Rodrigo having been cleared away, the parapets built up with gabions and fascines, all the trenches filled up, and a garrison of Spanish soldiers left for its defence—at the latter end of February we marched towards Badajoz, for the purpose of laying siege to that fortress, a distance of one hundred and sixty miles, the road more than half way lying through the rocky provinces of Portugal, where the villages are generally built on the tops of the highest mountains, with the remains of Moorish castles, or towers, studding the wildest rocks and the most tremendous precipices.
We remained a week at Castello de Vida, then resumed our march, and, on the 16th of March, entered Elvas, the principal fortress on the frontier of the Alentéjo, three leagues distant from Badajoz. It is situated on a hill, flanked on the right by a fort or citadel, half a mile without its walls, and on the left by the fort La Lippe, which stands on a scarped hill, a mile from the town.
While quartering off the soldiers, I observed a very pretty young lady looking out of a casement, which occasioned her house to be selected for our quarter. In the evening, myself and messmate were invited to take chocolate and sweetmeats with the family; and, before retiring, the good old Senhora remarked our youthful appearance, and begged that, should either of us be wounded, we would come to her house. My companion was subsequently shot through the body, and, being conveyed back to Elvas, the mother and daughter kindly watched over him until he was perfectly recovered.
[14] Now Major General Sir John Colborne.
[15] During the siege, the enemy threw a vast quantity of shells. One night two mortars kept up an incessant discharge; and the soldiers called out "Here comes a shell from big Tom; and here comes another from little Tom." All the cannon shot that flew over our trenches lodged on a hill one mile north of the town, at the base of which was a spring, where I saw a soldier killed while stooping down to fill his canteen with water. This hill, owing to its being so ploughed up with balls, was familiarly named by the soldiers plumb-pudding hill.