Early on the following morning, we began to retrace our steps to Llerena. The day being extremely hot, and not a single drop of water to be had between the two places, a great many of the men sunk upon the ground completely overpowered, some of them to rise no more. During the latter part of the march, my thirst was so great, that when about a-quarter of a mile from Llerena, I was forced to lie down, and might have been reposing near the same spot to this day, had not a soldier kindly offered me a mouthful of mud and water, (the only liquid any of them could procure) which revived me so much, that in course of a few minutes, I was enabled to follow my friends into town.
On the 18th of July, we bade a final adieu to Llerena, and retired to Benveneida. Resuming our march at sun-set the same evening, we arrived at Zafra at sun-rise on the following morning.
An hour before our battalion marched from Benveneida, the wife of a private soldier of the 3rd company presented her lord and master with two fine chubby boys. On the two being presented to the astonished father, he exclaimed, in accents of the deepest despair, "Gude preserve me, Betty Watt, what can I do wi' them?"
On the day we returned to Zafra an officer received over three inhabited, and four uninhabited houses for the use of his company. The latter had neither doors nor windows, and the floors were covered with nastiness of every description. Notwithstanding this, however, the acting captain retained the best house to himself; and as he would not share it with the other officers, they, as a matter of course, were compelled to occupy the only other one which could accommodate them,—a house large enough to have held the whole company. The other house being very small, six men only found shelter under its roof. The consequence of this selfish conduct I need not point out, farther than this, that it drew upon the head of the principal actor a degree of odium which he could never remove. From this it is sufficiently obvious, that in the distribution of quarters, officers commanding companies should never permit any thing like selfishness or partiality to appear in any part of their conduct. On the contrary, they should invariably hand over to the non-commissioned officers and privates, the houses best calculated for their accommodation, although the honourable, and really humane act, may have the effect of circumscribing their own personal comforts.
In regard to the quartering of troops, I trust the following hint may be of some use to those military gentlemen who have not yet had an opportunity of performing that duty on foreign service.
On receiving over the houses intended for the accommodation of his company, the officer in charge of it should visit the quarters along with a sergeant, who should be made to pace every apartment, and mark on a piece of paper the size of each in square yards, reckoning each pace a yard. On this being done, all that remains for the officer to do, is to sum up the whole, then divide it by the number of men in the company; the result will shew him at one glance the exact space which each individual is entitled to, whether that may be one square yard or twenty.
On entering the square of Zafra with a few friends, about ten o'clock in the morning of the 28th of July, we beheld with sincere sorrow the Marquis of Almeida flying from one place to another, and with a stentorian voice offering to bet thirty doubloons to one that IT was true. I say sincere sorrow, for not knowing the cause of his offering such odds, we really fancied that the noble patriot had gone mad. On getting a little nearer, however, we were informed that a Spaniard, an entire stranger, had waited upon the chief magistrate a short time before, and given him an interesting account of a battle fought near Salamanca, on the 22d July, between Lord Wellington and Marshal Marmont, in which the latter had been totally defeated. Daily expecting to hear of the retreat of the northern army into Portugal, no one gave credit to the poor man's story but the Marquis. Indeed some threw out hints of the man being a spy. On this being reported to him, he instantly made a voluntary tender of his person to be incarcerated in the common jail till the official dispatches arrived, when he could be punished if found to have deviated from the truth. I need scarcely add, that on the arrival of the official account next morning, he was permitted to return to the banks of the Tormes, having previously received something more substantial than empty thanks for his patriotic conduct in travelling such a distance with no other object in view than to be the first to give the gratifying intelligence of the victory to the British General and his patriotic countrymen in Estremadura.
The French troops in and around Hornachos having been reinforced to an extent, which caused considerable uneasiness to our General for the safety of our cavalry stationed at Villa-Franca, the 1st and 2d brigades of infantry moved from Zafra a little before mid-night on the 28th of July, and at eight o'clock next morning encamped close to Villa-Franca. On the march Sir Rowland Hill was so kind as to communicate to us the heart-stirring tidings from Lord Wellington on the banks of the Tormes, which, as may be supposed, were received by officers and men with a universal burst of applause. In the evening the troops were ordered a double allowance of grog, to drink in a full-flowing cup the health of Lord Wellington and his gallant companions.
Every thing being quiet at Villa-Franca, we quitted our encampment on the 31st, and moved to Fuente del-Maestre. General L'Allemand having attacked our cavalry in front of Villa-Franca, early next morning our brigade was ordered to move to their assistance with all possible dispatch. We had proceeded about half-way, when we were desired to return; but we had scarcely commenced our retrograde movement, when a third order made us again wheel to the right-about, and proceed according to our original instructions. This marching and counter-marching, under a broiling sun, we cheerfully put up with, knowing it was caused by the movements of the enemy; but we could not so easily prevail upon ourselves to forgive the tardy movements of those who kept us roasting three hours in the streets of Villa-Franca, before they handed over the quarters allotted to the brigade.
Between small, ill-ventilated rooms, an over-heated atmosphere, and empty purses, our situation in Villa-Franca was far from an enviable one. During our stay, many of us were cooped up in apartments, into which no thrifty housewife would have put her pigs, even for a single night. By repeated threats of a morning visit from the enemy, it was deemed advisable to detach five companies of infantry two miles to the front, every evening a little before sun-set, to render assistance to the cavalry and infantry piquets, in case of an attack. About eight o'clock one evening, when the right wing of the 92d regiment, under Colonel Cameron, happened to be on this duty, a smart tirailleur fire, in the direction of Villa-Franca, struck with astonishment the ears of the Highland Colonel. Convinced that the French had eluded the vigilance of our out-posts, and penetrated to the town, he ordered small piquets to be posted around the main body, and dispatched an officer and a few files of men towards Villa-Franca, to obtain intelligence. Night-marching almost every soldier detests,—for night-fighting few have a greater relish,—consequently the feelings of the men were wound up to the highest pitch, the situation in which they found themselves placed being one of those which no soldier admires. An hour and a-half passed away, and there were no tidings of the party sent towards the town. Despairing of seeing it again, a second was about to set out on a similar errand, when the other returned with a message from Sir William Erskine, commanding in Villa-Franca, which at length satisfied us that the ominous sounds which had disturbed our repose, proceeded, not from the muskets of an enemy, but from those of a loyal and joyous people, who had adopted the above mode of testifying their loyalty to their King, and gratitude to the British General, for wresting their Capital from the iron grasp of a ruthless despot.