The fort surrendered. I went into the town, and could not help feeling great pleasure that these poor people had a release from the French garrison, which the most sanguine of them fancied would never happen. They expressed their joy in a most frantic manner and praised their deliverers, as they called the English, and expressed their abhorrence of the French officers and soldiery. To amuse myself, I visited the cathedral, which is a handsome building, and possesses a good organ of large dimensions. This place is filled with churches, monasteries, and nunneries, that gives it a very priest-ridden appearance, and makes one sympathise with the unfortunate people of such a country who are, partly by coercion, but more through the tenets imbibed from their earliest years, the dupes of superstition and bigotry. They fancy it necessary towards their eternal salvation to aid in supporting these fat-sided and sleek-faced rascals, who, under the pretended semblance of soul-savers, congregate in large bodies, gourmandising the richest viands and drinking the best wine, and have frequently been known to live in every species of vice and idleness. Such men are decidedly drones in the industrious hive. I have often seen the poor peasant handcuffed and taken from his little field and from the bosom of his family (probably in him they lost their only support), called a _volunteer_, and entered upon the book of a regiment. If he deserted and was taken again, in all probability he would be shot. Meanwhile the stoutest men in the country, brought up in the service of the Church, were allowed to live in idleness, although the country was filled with their enemies, who were abusing the people and oppressing them in the most flagitious manner, burning their towns for amusement—in fact, committing every species of atrocity. [Sidenote: 28th] The army moved forward towards the Douro. As our movements had been confined between the northern frontier of Portugal and the banks of the Guadiana for so long a time, it gave us great delight to be entering the very heart of Spain to offer battle to the French army; each day seeing towns and villages we had never entered before. Marched to Castellanos de Moriscos and bivouacked. [Sidenote: 29th] Marched to Parada de Rubiales and bivouacked. [Sidenote: 30th] Marched to Castrillo and bivouacked. [Sidenote: 1812 July 1st]