The season was on the wane, summer was almost over, and it was well known that Lord Wellington meditated an attack on the town of Burgos; nevertheless all was tranquillity and gaiety with the troops at Madrid, and many of the sick and wounded from Salamanca reached us. Amongst the number was my friend and companion, Frederick Meade of the 88th. He had been badly wounded in the action of the 22nd, and with his arm in a sling, his wounds still unhealed, and his frame worn down by fatigue and exhaustion, his commanding officer was surprised to see him again so soon with his regiment; but various rumours were afloat as to the advance of the Madrid army upon Burgos, and Meade was not the kind of person likely to be absent from his corps when anything like active service was to be performed by it. Endowed with qualities which few young men in the army could boast of, he soon made his way into the very best society that the capital of Spain could be said to possess. A finished gentleman in the fullest acceptation of the word; young, handsome, speaking the Castilian language well, the French fluently, a first-rate musician, endowed by nature with a fine voice, which had been well cultivated, it is not surprising that he soon became a general favourite. In a word, wherever he went he was the magnet of attraction, and when we quitted Madrid it would have required a train of vehicles much more numerous than would have suited our order of march to convey those ladies who were, and would like to be more closely, attached to him. Poor fellow! he was greatly to blame, but it was not his fault; if the ladies of Madrid liked his face, or his voice, how could he help that? My man, Dan Carsons—and here I must say a word of apology to my friend Meade for coupling their names together—told me when we were on the eve of quitting Madrid, “that he (Carsons) didn’t know how the devil he could get away at-all-at-all, without taking three women, besides his wife Nelly with him.” So far all went on gaily at Madrid; but Lord Wellington was deeply occupied with matters of a different nature, although he joined in the amusements that took place. The capture of Burgos was what he aimed at, and his stay at Madrid was but a cloak to cover his real intentions. On the 1st of September he quitted the capital, and took upon himself the direction of that part of the army which he had decided was to march upon Burgos. He crossed the Douro on the 6th, and arrived at Valladolid on the same day, and from thence he followed the enemy on their retreat to Burgos. On the 16th he was, with a portion of his army, before that fortress, which he soon invested and laid siege to. The result of that siege, its failure, and the circumstances which led to it, have nothing to do with my adventures; they are the property of Colonel Napier—the only writer that, I believe, can be held up as a standard to refer to on the Peninsular War.