I enter the British Legion as Lieutenant—I raise a regiment of Riflemen—Appoint the non-commissioned officers—Recruiting districts—The peer and the dustmen—General Evans thanks—Embark at Gravesend—Voyage across the Bay of Biscay—Arrival in Spain—We land at Portugaletta—Pat’s logic—Spanish sentries shoot a man by mistake—A bad omen—Men confined for not wearing that which they never had—Modern rifle officers—Colonel de Rottenburgh—Legion officers classified—Fine appearance of the men—Rifles march to Zorossa—Head quarters at Bilboa—Bad quarters of the men—Severe drills—Bad beginning—The men begin to droop through ill-treatment—“Cats” indiscriminately used—Lieutenant Robinson drowned. From early youth, war has my mistress been, And tho’ a rugged one, I’ll constant prove, And not forsake her now. IT will be unnecessary for me to drag the reader through my chequered life, from the time I left the British army until my last campaign in Spain. I shall, therefore, jump across the interval, and bring him at once to the period at which I entered the British Legion. It is generally remarked that the life of a service soldier is full of incident; but the sphere in which he is designed to move can be understood only by those who have themselves moved in it. In general, old soldiers in describing battles, fill their accounts with the roar of cannon, the clouds of smoke, and the groans and cries of the wounded and dying; but in this part of my narrative, if I cannot relate the former, I will endeavour to describe the miseries of the unfortunate men with whom it was my fate to serve; and as I mean neither to borrow nor dispose of any other man’s stuff, I will relate those things only that came under my own observation. I am aware that some military men fancy a man cannot fight unless he has his country’s cause at heart, that in their ideas being the only thing capable of arousing his martial ardour; but I beg most humbly to differ from those gentlemen, and to tell them, that when a British subject is put into uniform, and placed in the ranks, with a firelock in his hand, before an enemy, he requires no stimulant nor patriotic impulse to urge him in attacking those opposed to him; neither can I see why a British subject should be ridiculed or prevented from (what he terms) “earning an honest livelihood;” nor why if he prefers being knocked on the head in serving a Foreign Power, he should be termed a mercenary and a murderer, as has been the case with the Legion.