On the 19th a march of a few miles brought all the columns within a short distance of Ciudad Rodrigo, and the commissariat transport having reached that place on the preceding day, quite unmolested, arrangements had already been made to send out food to meet the approaching columns. ‘About dusk we took up our ground on the face of the hill near Rodrigo--the weather now changing to a severe frost was intensely cold. We had not long been halted when the well-known summons of “turn out for biscuit” rang in our ears. The strongest went for it, and received two days’ rations for every man. It was customary to make an orderly division, but that night it was dispensed with, each man eagerly seized what he could get, and endeavoured to allay the dreadful gnawing which had tormented us during four days of unexampled cold and fatigue. In a short time two more rations were delivered, and the inordinate eating that ensued threatened to do more mischief than the former want[209].’ On the 20th the army was distributed in quarters around and behind Rodrigo--Hill’s column about Martiago, Zamorra, Robledo, Cespedosa, and other villages on the Upper Agueda; the centre column about Gallegos, Carpio, Pastores, El Bodon, Campillo, and other cantonments well known from the long tarrying of the army there in 1811. The Galicians were left out in the direction of San Felices and the Lower Agueda. Every one was now under cover, and food was abundant--almost too abundant at first. Rest, warmth, and regular rations were indeed necessary. ‘Scarcely a man had shoes--not that they had not been properly supplied with them before the retreat began, but the state of the roads had been such that as soon as a shoe fell off or stuck in the mud, in place of picking it up, the man kicked its fellow-companion after it. Yet the infantry was still efficient and fit to do its duty. But the cavalry and artillery were in a wretched state: the batteries of the 3rd, 6th, and 7th Divisions, the heavy cavalry, with the 11th and 12th Light Dragoons were nearly a wreck--the artillery of the 3rd Division lost 70 horses between Salamanca and Rodrigo.... The cavalry was half dismounted, the artillery without the proper number of horses to draw the guns, much less the ammunition cars--many died from cold and famine under the harness of the artillery and the saddles of the dragoons.... The batteries could with difficulty show three horses in place of eight to a gun[210].’