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"'It is the mistake of clever men, continued General Ducrôt sagely, 'to undervalue their opponents; but surely after yesterday the commonest prudence might have warned you to put the greatest possible distance between yourself and Sabugal. "'Sabugal? I echoed. "'Oh, my dear sir, we know. It was amusing eh! the barber's shop? I assure you I laughed.
The invasion cost Massena thirty thousand men, killed in battle, taken prisoners, or dead from hardships, fatigues and fevers. The Scudamores were not present at the battle of Sabugal, for on the afternoon after the combat of Foz d'Aronce an orderly rode up to the regiment and handed a note to the colonel. He read it, and at once summoned the Scudamores at his side.
After the action at Sabugal, the enemy retired to the neighbourhood of Ciudad Rodrigo, without our getting another look at them, and we took up the line of the Agueda and Axava rivers, for the blockade of the fortress of Almeida, in which they had left a garrison indifferently provisioned.
Some fleeting suspicion I may have had that here was another affair in which you and I had again managed to get confused; but if so the suspicion occurred only to be dismissed. A fortnight before you had left me on your way south to Badajoz, and you will own that to connect you with something which apparently had happened yesterday in a barber's shop in Sabugal was to overstrain guessing.
Affair near Frexedas. Arrival near Guarda. Murder. A stray Sentry. Battle of Sabugal. Spanish and Portuguese Frontiers. Blockade of Almeida. Battle-like. Current Value of Lord Wellington's Nose. Battle of Fuentes D'Onor. The Day after the Battle. A grave Remark. The Padre's House. Retreat of the Enemy. March 17th.
For, as usual, the two McNeills had managed to get mixed up in the story, a good half of which spread itself into a highly coloured version of my own escape from Sabugal on the evening of the 13th; how I had been arrested by a French officer in a back shop in the heart of the town; how, as he overhauled my incriminating papers, I had leapt on him with a knife and stabbed him to the heart, while my servant did the same with his orderly; how, having possessed ourselves of their clothes and horses, we had ridden boldly through the gate and southward to join Lord Wellington; and a great deal more equally veracious.
"I glanced up and saw a pair of horsemen about two gunshots away galloping down the uneven ridge towards us, with about a dozen in a cluster close behind. We leapt into saddle at once, made off through the oaks for perhaps a couple of hundred yards, and then wheeling sharply struck back across the hillside towards Sabugal.
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.
At Sabugal, in April last, after a bewildering comedy of errors, the Duke of Ragusa captured my kinsman here, and held him to account for some escapade of mine, of which, as a matter of fact, he had no knowledge whatever. You follow me?" The Doctor nodded gravely.
We overtook the enemy this afternoon, in position, behind the Coa, at Sabugal, with their advanced posts on our side of the river. I was sent on piquet for the night, and had my sentries within half-musket shot of theirs: it was wet, dark, and stormy when I went, about midnight, to visit them, and I was not a little annoyed to find one missing.
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