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Updated: June 5, 2025
Nor is it likely that I had ever reached the Agueda in time for the fighting had we not been met at Coimbra by an order to leave our guns in the magazine there and hurry forward to Ciudad Rodrigo, where my comrades were required to work the 24-pounders which composed the bulk of Lord Wellington's siege-train.
Ney, with 50,000 men, began the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo in earnest. The Agueda had now become fordable; and Crawford, with his light brigade, 2500 strong, was exposed to a sudden attack at any time.
The cacadores seven hundred in all toiled with a will under shot and shell; and when day broke a trench three feet deep and four wide had been opened and pushed for no less than six hundred yards towards the town! Next night the Portuguese were replaced by the First Division, which had been marched over the Agueda.
It happened that after nightfall on the 23rd of December an ambulance train arrived of six wagons, all full of sick demanding instant attention; and, close upon these, four other wagons laden with cavalrymen, wounded more or less severely in a foraging excursion beyond the Agueda, which had brought them into conflict with a casual party of Marmont's dragoons.
And my hopes faded as, with the approach of Christmas, wagon after wagon laden with sick soldiers crawled back to us from the low-lying country over which Lord Wellington had spread his forces between the Agueda and the upper Mondego men shuddering with ague or bent double with rheumatism, and all bringing down the same tales of short food, sodden quarters, and arrears of pay.
Voto a Cristo! what a wrecking there must have been! And to think the Carmencita could not be taken out! They had seen other luggers making eastward during the morning could recognize some by their sails, others by their gait, exaggerated in their struggle with the pitching of the sea: the San Pablo, the Gasparina, the Enriqueta, the Agueda, the Constanza.
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