Meanwhile the discomfited and routed pigs fled, and soon got out of the clutches of the advanced guard. The bulk of the fugitives took the road to _their_ rights but here they were again _wrong_. Had those ill-fated animals known anything of the “rules of the road,” they would have kept to the _left_. On the right they were encountered by a nearly famished brigade that had received no rations at all in the preceding twenty-four hours; and when they were, as has been seen, so roughly handled by men whose haversacks were amply stocked with meat, what chance had they—I ask the question fearlessly—of any mercy from a body of famished, ferocious fellows? The question I have just put is easily answered. They had none to expect, and none did they receive. Neither age nor sex was spared; and out of this fine herd of swine, scarcely one in one hundred escaped unhurt. No victory was ever more complete; and the grunting and squeaking of the wounded pigs and hogs throughout the forest was a sad contrast with the merriment of the soldiers, who toasted, on the points of their bayonets—intended for other and more noble game—the mangled fragments of their former companions. Day was drawing to its close, and the 3rd Division, commanded by Sir Edward Pakenham, was about to retire from the ground it had held during several hours in face of the enemy, when a warm fire of musketry on our left led us to suppose we were outflanked. The officers of the staff galloped in the direction from whence the firing proceeded. Sir Edward did the same, but it was some time before they reached the scene of action. In the meantime the different regiments were so arranged as to be ready either to advance or retreat, as circumstances might require; and the French corps in our front made demonstrations of a similar kind. In this state of suspense we remained for nearly an hour, when at last Sir Edward returned, with the news that the firing was caused by a fresh attack on the pigs that had escaped the first brunt of the attack against them. He ordered the different advance posts to be placed, which he superintended in person; the soldiers then prepared to fell timber for fires, and some ran to an uninhabited village—they were all uninhabited on the line of our march for that matter—for the purpose of getting dry wood, that is to say, the doors and roofs of the houses, to enable us to light up the green timber, which was the only fuel we could command. The soldiers and officers of all ranks were nearly exhausted from cold and wet; and had the village in question belonged to the king of England, much less to a parcel of Spanish peasants, it would have shared the same fate as the one in question.