Head-quarters were at Grenalda, some miles distant from where we lay, and a company of our regiment occasionally did duty over the Duke, whose quarters were in the house of the Alcalde. We had strict orders to admit no one inside the gates leading to the house, unless some particular despatch from the front, or from Don Julian Sanchez, the Guerilla chieftain. Indeed, a report had arisen amongst us, at the time, that his Grace was not altogether right in his head; but this was mere fiction. I used to observe him walking through the market-place, leading by the hand a little Spanish girl, some five or six years old, and humming a short tune or dry whistle, and occasionally purchasing little sweets, at the child’s request, from the paysannes of the stalls. Here, for the first time, I saw Don Julian Sanchez, the noted Guerilla leader, linked arm in arm with the Duke—an instance peculiar to the time, of obscure merit rising of its own impulse to an equality with the greatest man of the age. My readers may well suppose I did not slightly notice the square well-set figure, dark scowl, and flashing eyes of the Guerilla, whose humble birth-place I afterwards visited, in a small village between Rodrigo and Salamanca. I had been informed that he first began his career as a pig-boy, but owing to some cruelties exercised on a branch of his family by the French, he took an inveterate hatred to them, which he exemplified by surprising and slaughtering two or three of their soldiers, whom he found asleep in a wood. Accompanied by one or two others, he continued and increased his sanguinary feats, and gradually collected a small band, then a body, and eventually commanded upwards of twenty thousand Guerillas, well-armed, and equipped with British arms and accoutrements, and who rendered more assistance to the cause of the British than all the Spanish troops beside.