The British pressed madly on, like heated blood-hounds; but when they descended the slope, the village of Redinha was in flames, and the French in full retreat beyond it. A single howitzer seemed our only trophy, and even this we were not destined to boast of, for from the midst of the crashing flame and dense smoke of the burning village, a troop of dragoons rushed forward, and charging our infantry, carried it off. The struggle, though but for a moment, cost them dear: twenty of their comrades lay dead upon the spot; but they were resolute and determined, and the officer who led them on, fighting hand to hand with a soldier of the Forty-second, cheered them as they retired. His gallant bearing, and his coat covered with decorations, bespoke him one of note, and well it might; he who thus perilled his life to maintain the courage of his soldiers at the commencement of a retreat, was none other than Ney himself, _le plus brave des braves_. The British pressed hotly on, and the light troops crossed the river almost at the same time with the French. Ney, however, fell back upon Condeixa, where his main body was posted, and all farther pursuit was for the present abandoned. At Casa Noval and at Foz d’Aronce, the allies were successful; but the French still continued to retire, burning the towns and villages in their rear, and devastating the country along the whole line of march by every expedient of cruelty the heart of man has ever conceived. In the words of one whose descriptions, however fraught with the most wonderful power of painting, are equally marked by truth, “Every horror that could make war hideous attended this dreadful march. Distress, conflagration, death in all modes,--from wounds, from fatigue, from water, from the flames, from starvation,--vengeance, unlimited vengeance, was on every side.” The country was a desert! Such was the exhaustion of the allies, who suffered even greater privations than the enemy, that they halted upon the 16th, unable to proceed farther; and the river Ceira, swollen and unfordable, flowed between the rival armies. The repose of even one day was a most grateful interruption to the harassing career we had pursued for some time past; and it seemed that my comrades felt, like myself, that such an opportunity was by no means to be neglected; but while I am devoting so much space and trespassing on my reader’s patience thus far with narrative of flood and field, let me steal a chapter for what will sometimes seem a scarcely less congenial topic, and bring back the recollection of a glorious night in the Peninsula. CHAPTER XXI. PATRICK’S DAY IN THE PENINSULA. The _réveil_ had not yet sounded, when I felt my shoulder shaken gently as I lay wrapped up in my cloak beneath a prickly pear-tree.