A short time after I had heard the preceding sketch, I had an opportunity of observing that sanguinary feeling of revenge that so peculiarly characterized the Guerillas during the war. I rejoined my regiment at a little village about three leagues from Madrid, called Gataffe. In the farm-house, where the greater part of our company were quartered, was a very pretty Spanish girl who had a brother serving with the Guerillas. One hot summer evening, when several comrades and myself were sitting on a bench outside the door, joking with the girl, a swarthy, savage-looking Spaniard came up, and was welcomed with much joy by the girl and her parents. The new-comer was armed to the teeth with pistols, daggers, and a long gun, which, together with his crimson sash and free bearing, at once proclaimed him the Guerilla. At first we imagined him the girl’s brother, but soon perceived another, though equally dear tie, cemented their affection: he was her lover or suitor. While engaged in conversation with his sweetheart and her parents, we observed him take rather ostentatiously from his side a long heavy-looking silk purse, the contents of which he emptied into the lap of his mistress. The Spaniard’s eyes sparkled with pleasure; but, for the honour of a British soldier, a general disgust pervaded the minds of my comrades and myself, when we beheld a number of human ears and fingers, which glistened with the golden ornaments they still retained. He then told us, with an air of bravado, that he had cut them from off the bodies of the French whom he himself had slain in battle, each ear and finger having on a gold ring. “Napoleon,” he observed, in his native dialect, with a grim smile—“Napoleon loves his soldiers, and so do the ravens;” as he pointed to several of those carrion birds perched on the walls of an old convent covered with ivy. “We find them plenty of food; they shall never want, so long as a Frenchman remains in Spain.” Such are the men who were considered the greatest patriots attached to the Spanish army during the war. The chief business of the British at this time was laying siege to Burgos. The enemy having also assembled in great numbers betwixt it and Vittoria, Lord Wellington, thinking he was not able to oppose their force, ordered the whole of the divisions to retire on Salamanca. We of the light division received orders to the same effect. On the 22nd of October we left Madrid: the contempt with which the inhabitants treated us for leaving them once more to the mercy of the French, cannot easily be forgotten.