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Updated: June 6, 2025
I'm forgetting it all fast I would never be minding it at all but for you and Miss Mary there, and that picture of the man I was once, on the wall. I mind more of Badajos and San Sebastian that was the roaring, the bloody, the splendid time! than of the girl that played us on her string three brothers at a single cast a witch's fishing. What nonsense is this to be bringing up at our time of life?
It was during this mission, and by agreement with the Prince de la Paix, that the treaty of Badajos was concluded, in order to procure which it is said that Portugal gave thirty millions.
The English retired, therefore, to Badajos, and thence to the Portuguese frontier. On the eastern side of the Peninsula, Blake, advancing with the view of recovering Zaragossa, was met on the 19th of June by Marshal Suchet, Duke of Albufera, and totally routed. The central Spanish army, under Ariezaga, attempted, with equal ill-fortune, to relieve Madrid.
"Alas!" said the old woman, "I have a shrewd suspicion of a reverend Grey Friar, who stayed last night in the same inn with us at Badajos. God preserve me from judging rashly, but he came into our room twice, and he set out upon his journey long before us."
As a general action seemed now to be inevitable, we anxiously longed for the return of Lord Wellington, who had been suddenly called to the corps of the army under Marshal Beresford, near Badajos, as we would rather see his long nose in the fight than a reinforcement of ten thousand men any day.
When I started I had no idea of making such a long journey; but had intended to join Lord Beresford in front of Badajos, if I could not manage to cross the frontier higher up; but Marmont's march south rendered that impossible, and I thought that the safer plan would be to keep well away from the frontier; as of course things are much more settled in the interior, and two or three muleteers with their animals would excite little attention, even if we passed through a town with a large French garrison; except that the mules might have been impressed and, as I had no means of recompensing my guide in that case, I was anxious to avoid all risk.
Many of these laws are unrepealed, and it is less than a century since highly disciplined British troops claimed their dreadful rights at Badajos and Rodrigo. Recent European wars have been so short that discipline and humanity have not had time to go to pieces, but a long war would show that man is ever the same, and that civilization is the thinnest of veneers.
Sorely cut up in every battle, but always reinforced by the bravest of men, for the fame of following the old colours, shot through and through, which Ensign Richard Doubledick had saved, inspired all breasts, this regiment fought its way through the Peninsular war, up to the investment of Badajos in eighteen hundred and twelve.
Nothing could exceed the courage which they displayed, and their conduct rivalled that of the storming party at the siege of Badajos; but they were fighting against impossibilities. The bastion could not be climbed.
Nevertheless, on the 4th of April I was able to present myself at Lord Wellington's headquarters before Badajos, and that same evening started northwards again with his particular instructions. Our iron guns had worked fast and well, and already three breaches on the eastern side of the town were nearly practicable.
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