While in the other parts of the Peninsula much activity prevailed, with us all was quiet; and although the season was advancing towards spring, there was no appearance of our commencing the offensive, and conjectures innumerable were the consequence. Promotion, that great planet whose influence more or less affected us all, was perpetually on the tapis. There were some among us of a desponding cast; they would say, “Have we not lost Almeida, Rodrigo, and now, though last not least, Badajoz? And should we be obliged to evacuate the Peninsula, good-bye to promotion.” Others there were who held a different opinion, and, resting their hopes on some fortunate “turn-up,” expected ere long to have the enviable title of captain attached to their name. To this class I belonged, and as it was the most numerous in the army, it was in consequence the most clamorous on this head. The life of a subaltern, in what Miss Mac-Tab would call a marching regiment, where many of us, and I myself for one, had little except our pay, is a perpetual scene of irritating calculation from the 24th of one month to the 24th of the next. No matter under what circumstances, or in what quarter of the globe the subaltern is placed, his _first_ thought points towards that powerful magnet the _twenty-fourth_—his _next_ to promotion. The 24th has scarcely passed when the same routine is pursued, every hour increasing in interest according to the immediate wants of the calculator; and time rolls on, either rapidly or slowly, in the exact ratio with the strength or weakness of his purse. The moment he receives his pay he discharges his bills, and by the time he has got about half-way into the first week of the next month, he has little occasion for a knowledge of Cocker to enable him to calculate his money. The period generally reckoned on by a subaltern to get his company, in a good fighting regiment—that is to say, one that had the good luck to be in the thick and thin of what was going on, for all regiments fight alike for that matter—was from five to six years. The “extra shilling” was rarely heard of, and never thought of but with disgust.[9] ----- Footnote 9: The extra shilling was given to lieutenants who had served in that rank seven years or more, and had not obtained a company. ----- CHAPTER VI Excesses and sufferings of the French during their retreat—Combats of Foz d'Aronce and Sabugal—Battle of Fuentes d'Oñoro—Sir E. Pakenham, Colonel Wallace, and the 88th Regiment.