After all our money was spent we went back quietly to the convent. In about a fortnight after that our paymaster fortunately came out from home to pay us some back pay due to us (two months). Each soldier had £2 5s. per month; our pay was augmented to that of a British soldier; they received their two months’ money. My pay was fourpence a-day extra, which, amounting to ten shillings a-month, made it £5 10s. per two months. I had it paid to me in Spanish dollars, and I pushed off to the quay to have a “flare up.” In “flaring up” in the course of the night, I “flared down,” and measured my length on the ground, with a stone under my head for a pillow. When I woke up in the morning, the devil might have danced a hornpipe in my pocket; for my money was all gone, and my orders off my breast had followed my money. I said it was all fair in war, the scamps had cleaned me out. “I will be as keen as any other one to-night to look out to see what I can lay hold of.” So I pushed off to the convent, and I had a good sleep through the day, and I proceeded on the way down to the quay, where I found my comrades reeling about from side to side. I reeled up against one fellow, but he had not quite enough in his noddle box; I reeled up against another one, and down we went together; my hands were soon in his pockets, to make up for what I had lost the night before. I had a good “flare up” that night, and took great care I did not “flare down.”
In the morning there was a chap came up to me pulling such a long, wry face. I said to him, “Why so down in the mouth?” He answered, “Some one has been about me and stole all my money.” “The devil they did!” replied I; “it was only the night before they treated me in the same way.” “Well,” he says, “Corporal, let us keep a sharp look out, and, if I catch the scoundrel that treated me so, I’ll make his bones sore for a month.” But I, pitying the poor devil pulling such a long face, took him into a wine shop to give him a glass with his own money. I proceeded then to the convent, and kept myself all night.
I happened to be on guard a few days after this, and was sitting on a low wall opposite the guard room door, and a few soldiers along with me, it being night (somewhere near eleven o’clock), when the rounds came round the corner of a wall; I challenged and got no reply, only a “hoo, hoo;” I jumped off the wall to meet his approach with a lump of a stone in my hand, and hit him full in the face, which made him sing out for his great grandfather. As soon as he came on the ground, I out with my bayonet and ran it into his neck. I told the men with me to lay hold of him by the hind legs, and to bring him on; they brought him down to the guard room, proceeding towards the kitchen, when the sergeant jumped up off the guard bed half asleep as he was, and asked, “What is the matter?” I replied, “You shall have your share when it is ready.” “You Corporal Knight,” said he, “you are a terrible fellow for looking after the pigs.” I answered, “That is what I principally hit on.” I told the men to drag him into the mess kitchen, and make a good fire under the copper to scald him. They complied with my orders, and I said, “Those who eat the most pork will eat the most bristles.” After the pig was got ready, I told them to shoulder the pot and march; they brought the pig into the guard room, and we all took a hearty meal off him. Nothing took place after that for some little time; being very badly off for rations, the colonel issued an order for a non-commissioned officer of a company to take a portion of men daily into the garden, so I called four men to bring their haversacks to proceed into the garden along with me; I went to the Monk’s kitchen door and knocked; he asked in the Portuguese language who was there; he opened the door and told me to come in, and I told the men to follow me. I went into the garden and told the men to fall to and get some vegetables; in the meantime I shook myself off a few figs. After they had supplied themselves with vegetables, I told them they could get a little fruit for themselves, but not to break or destroy the trees. When they had got a supply I told them to come on; accordingly we went into the kitchen, and I observed a pig’s cheek on the block, belonging to the monks; I called the cook, in order to take his attention off the block, and he came over to me; in the meantime I put my hand back as a signal to one of the men to carry away the pig’s cheek; as soon as I saw the pig’s cheek had disappeared from the block, I thought it was time for me to disappear also, so I said to the cook in Portuguese, “Adieu, signor;” he called me a very good man, and said there would be a good deal of heavy firing in a short time, and that the English soldiers were very good in the field.
After I departed from the convent, the pig’s cheek we had carried off and the vegetables in the garden soon disappeared also. But it was best of all when the pigs themselves made their way into the garden; and, not to touch those in the woods, or roads, as they did not seem half fond of the garden, we fell into the plan of driving them into the garden, and then falling upon them and killing them. The captain, on going his rounds the first evening, saw three lying dead in the kitchen, waiting for scalding. I told him not to be too particular about scalding them, for those that eat the most pork would eat the most bristles. Going his rounds the following evening, he saw six pigs, and he said, “The pigs are very partial to the garden. Are you sure you found them all there?” No reply. “Who is butcher among you?” he asked. No reply yet. Seeing me sitting on the mess-room kitchen table, he asked me if I knew anything of the affair. I told him, “No; I had come in promiscuously to get a light of my cheroot.” He remarked, “I think you are one of the ringleaders.” He thought right enough, too. Notwithstanding all his sharpness, we managed to keep ourselves pretty well supplied with pork, and also to get a fair share of aquadente. In fact, we took everything we could possibly lay our hands on. We often turned out of the convent at night, at all hours, and formed close column in the Arsenal Square, there to lay till further orders, under expectation of the enemy, coming up to rescue the town from us. As the day approached, we would march back into the convent. Our rations were very scantily served out; there was scarcely a thing a dog or cat could eat but what was devoured by the soldiers. I had never ventured myself yet on eating dogs or cats. Going up a street called Rue Tendemdza, I met two lancers coming down the street, and they said to me, “Corporal, why so down in the mouth?” I said, “It would make anyone look down in the mouth to be starved as we were.” “Just come along with us; we have been cooking some mutton.” And they brought me into the Horse Barracks, and put some meat before me with some soup. I “progged” hold of a piece of meat with a fork, and lifted it up to my nose and smelt it. “Don’t tell me this is mutton,” I remarked, “it is part of an old tom cat.” “Taste it,” said he, “it will do you no harm. Here, I will show you how to eat;” and taking a leg he munched away at it like a Russian. Having seen this man eat the leg of the cat, and being moreover very hungry at the time, I took a mouthful or two but would not eat any more of it. I would rather have died with hunger. I was nearly choked all the day drinking water to take the dreadful taste out of my mouth. Some time afterwards, however, I was as keen as any one looking after the same animals; necessity compelled me to do so.
The cavalry had two or three horses that died with sheer hunger, as there was no forage to give them. The poor animals used to tremble at the water trough. I made a remark that if the enemy had known how we were situated they could very easily have taken the town from us. The inhabitants of the town were also starving. I have actually seen the cavalry scrape the meat off the dead horses’ bones. The cholera broke out (1832), and the inhabitants began to die off very fast. If the enemy had come against us with a reinforcement, they could have killed and destroyed us all; but it was fortunate for us poor soldiers that they did not know how we were situated. They lived first-rate themselves, but would allow nothing to reach us. We often used to make a sally to beat them back in order to get something to eat, if possible. We used sometimes to get rations served out that were conveyed by the fleet whenever they had an opportunity of working the boats.
There was a 15-gun battery on the north side of the town, just at the entrance to the bar, coming into the river Douro. Our people formed a bridge of pontoons, and our army went over (about 6000) to beat back the enemy and rescue the battery. It was not very difficult to come at, and we took possession of the battery, and the guns were spiked and thrown off the carriages. We beat the enemy about two leagues to the rear, and marched back again into the town. We cut down the body of a soldier from off a tree on the breast of the town, which had been hanging there seven weeks, and buried him. As we often went down the river at low water mark, we supposed the enemy had got hold of the poor man.
We now had an excellent allowance served out by the admiral’s squadron, consisting of beef and biscuit, sometimes pork. Before we captured the battery, when conveying the boats in, they used to muffle the oars to prevent any noise being made by them, so as to do everything as secretly as possible; for they would have swamped us if they had heard any noise. We had very hard times of it.
On the seventeenth of August, I was ordered to take two invalids into the general hospital, and after giving them up to the doctor, I was returning to my residence: eight hundred men arrived a few days before, from Great Britain, called the British volunteers, under the command of Colonel Burrel. The men, who were drinking in the town, saw me passing, and called out to me to come and take a glass of wine. Accordingly I went in with them, and I stopped during the night; early on the following morning (the eighteenth), I heard a gun fire from the battery; they asked me what was the meaning of that gun firing. I told them I thought it was something going to turn up that day, and in a very short period. The battery guns were in full play, I shook hands with them, and made off to where our company lay; when I arrived, the captain asked me where I had been; I told him I had been to the general hospital with two invalids. He said, “Look sharp up into the room and get your accoutrements on,” but when I came into the room they were all taken away and put into the quarter-master’s stores; I came down and informed the captain, then ran over to the quarter-master’s stores, and looked about for my accoutrements, but could not discover them; I picked up an old kit of belts that had not had a bit of pipeclay on them for months; I lifted an old firelock and a bayonet, they were very rusty; I looked into the pouch to see if there was any ammunition, and found it was empty; I went over to the barrel where the ammunition was kept, and filled my pouch with sixty rounds, and forty in an old haversack I lifted; I then made my way out to the company as soon as I could. The battalion was all ready to march off—we proceeded over a gully into the field of action, the battalion companies formed lines, and the light company in skirmishing order; the bugle sounded to commence fire, I primed, and found she was loaded, she flashed in the pan,—I tried her again, and she flashed in the pan again; I said to my next man, “Lend me your worm to draw the charge;” I stooped down behind a lot of stones, thinking I could not get shot while drawing the charge; I sprang the ramrod, and she was all right, I loaded her, and she flashed in the pan again; she was so foul that she would not go off; I lifted her by the muzzle, hit the butt of her on a rock, and broke her short in two, for I was so agitated, thinking I was not going to get a shot at the enemy. I advanced about three hundred yards, when I discovered three sergeants of the enemy lying dead; I lifted one of their fuzees, and tried her to see if she was loaded; she was discharged, but I soon charged her, and she went off most beautifully. I fired sixty-three rounds, and she did not miss fire once.
We beat the enemy back, and lay neutral on the ground, thinking a reinforcement would come up. After two hours they did so. We had a strong attack from them, and kept it up till sundown. Captain Shaw received a wound through both calves of his legs, which caused him to fall. He called out to me (I was not many yards from him) to take him to the rear, and I carried him about two or three hundred yards down under the hill, and put him into a quarry hole. “Hey, mon!” he cried, “ye going to leave me here?” He was a very heavy man. I told him that he was out of the way of the shots, and that I would send a muleteer (the first I could meet with) to carry him into the town. In going back to my company I met a muleteer going into the town for ammunition, and I pointed to the place where the captain lay. Shortly afterwards the enemy beat the retreat, we marched back into the town. We lost upwards of 300, killed and wounded. As I was going into the town, I was very desirous to look where the captain lay, and I observed that he was gone. We took up our old position, and there we lay till further orders.
On the 7th of September, the enemy had a reinforcement from Lisbon; and we had another attack from them, and bonfire convenient to the town. We kept up a strong fire, but were compelled to retreat, as our number was getting weak, and, coming into the town they could not get a sufficient supply of ammunition to keep the guns in full play. There were five regiments of Tachedores, brought from the Foise, placed there to keep that part of the town good. We beat the enemy back again to the lines. Some of the skirmishers belonging to the enemy went down through the gardens under the retreat; they had several walls to go over, which divided the gardens. There was a fellow just before me, getting over the wall, and I ran my bayonet into him to assist him over. He turned round, and said in Portuguese language, that I was a good fellow, which was a hint for me to leave off pushing him with my bayonet. We kept it up till night. The enemy were supposed to have lost about 7000, and our side nearly 2000, from what I could understand.