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Travelling on mule-back now as a Portuguese drover out of work, I dodged a couple of marauding parties below Penamacor, found Marmont in force in Sabugal at the bend of the Coa, on the 9th reached Guarda, a town on the top of a steep mountain, and there found General Trant in position with about 6,000 raw militiamen.
"Somewhat grossly, in return for an insult put upon me somewhat grossly in the presence of my company, two days ago, in the camp above Penamacor, when I took the liberty to resent a message conveyed by him to my colonel as he alleges upon the authority of the marshal, the Duke of Ragusa."
"You wish, for use in your Memoirs, an account of my capture in the month of April, 1811, and the death of my faithful servant, José. "The preceding night we had spent in the woods below the great French camp, and perhaps a mile above the mouth of the pass opening on Penamacor.
On the evening of the 16th General Wilson sent for me. "Here is a nasty piece of news," said he. "Your namesake is a prisoner." "Where?" "In Sabugal; but it seems he was brought there from the main camp above Penamacor. Trant tells me that you are not only namesakes but kinsmen. Would you care to question the messenger?" The messenger was brought in a peasant from the Penamacor district.
Out of his rambling tale one or two certainties emerged. McNeill the celebrated McNeill was a prisoner; he had been taken on the 14th somewhere in the pass above Penamacor, and conveyed to Sabugal to await the French marshal's return. His servant was dead killed in trying to escape, or to help his master's escape. So much I sifted out of the mass of inaccuracies.
I hear that the bulk of his troops are in camp above Penamacor; that at the outside he has in Sabugal under his hand but 5,000. Now Silveira should be here in a couple of days; that will make us roughly 12,000." "Ah!" said I, "a surprise?" He nodded. "Night?" He nodded again. "And your cavalry?" I pursued. "I could, perhaps, force General Bacellar to spare his squadron of dragoons from Celorico.
It never occurred to me nor could it have occurred to any reasonable man to guess, upon no evidence, that a marshal of France had gone gallivanting with six thousand horse and two brigades of infantry in chase of a handful of undrilled militia. "My impression was that his move, if he made one, would be a resolute descent through Penamacor and upon Castello Branco.
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