[239] On the night of the 28th, Soult took the precaution of sending his artillery into France, or there is no doubt that many of his guns would have been added to the immense parc already captured from Joseph at Vitoria.
[240] “The peculiarity of the prospect was heightened by a long train of Spaniards, carrying officers and soldiers to the rear, who had been wounded in the late engagements, and who were always removed to proper hospitals as soon as it could be done with safety.
“The care of the sick and wounded necessarily employed a number of men; and they could nowhere receive such able attention as in the general hospitals established within the Spanish frontiers.
“The rugged mountain-road was not passable for spring-waggons, on which the wounded are usually conveyed to the rear, and they were therefore carried in blankets fastened at the sides to a couple of poles, and thus borne on the shoulders of the peasantry.
“This mode of conveyance on bad roads is far preferable to that of spring-waggons; but, as it required four men to carry one sick person, the transport of the small number of them gave the train a formidable appearance when seen extended for so great a length along the windings of the mountain track.”—Batty.
[241] “The Bivouac.”
[242] “Sailors were employed in constructing batteries, and never did men more thoroughly enjoy their occupation.
“They had double allowance of grog, as their work required; and at their own cost they had a fiddler; they who had worked their spell in the battery, went to relieve their comrades in the dance; and at every shot which fell upon the castle they gave three cheers.”
[243] “The French lost many men by our spherical case-shot; and they attempted to imitate what they had found so destructive, by filling common shells with small balls, and bursting them over the heads of the besiegers; but these were without effect.”
[244] “Men were now invited to volunteer for the assault, such men, it was said, ‘as knew how to shew other troops how to mount a breach.’ When this was communicated to the fourth division, which was to furnish four hundred men, the whole moved forward.”—Southey.