On the 30th of September the British army went into cantonments, the THIRTY-SIXTH occupying the village of Pinziu. There Lieut.-Colonel the Honorable Basil Cochrane found his health so much on the decline that he was compelled to apply for leave to return to England; and on the 13th of October he quitted the corps for that purpose, the command of which then devolved on Major William Cross. On the 24th of November the battalion marched to Gallegos, in Spain, with the view of intercepting a convoy of provisions intended for the garrison of Ciudad Rodrigo, but the incessant rain had so flooded the rivers that it was found impossible to cross at the points intended, which circumstance enabled the convoy to reach its destination. The battalion commenced its march to new cantonments at Mongualda on the 27th of November, which it reached on the 3d of December. [Sidenote: 1812.] On the 14th of January 1812 the battalion was moved from Mongualda, by forced marches, to assist in the siege of _Ciudad Rodrigo_, which, however, was taken on the night of the 19th of January by the troops under Viscount Wellington, just as the THIRTY-SIXTH were on the point of leaving Nava d’Aver, within ten miles of the scene of operations; the battalion remained at Nava d’Aver until Ciudad Rodrigo was secured against a _coup de main_, and then marched into cantonments at Meda, which it reached on the 3d of February. Major-General Henry Clinton arrived and assumed the command of the sixth division on the 11th of February. On the 20th of that month the battalion marched for the south of Portugal, reached Estremos on the 6th of March, and remained there until the 14th, on which day it proceeded to Borba, and on the 15th to the camp at Elvas, where the army was assembled. On the following day it marched to aid in investing _Badajoz_, and from thence proceeded with the covering army, under Lieut.-General Sir Thomas Graham (afterwards Lord Lynedoch), which, after the affairs of Usagré, Llerena, Berlonga, and Asuaga, effected the expulsion of the enemy from Spanish Estremadura, and then returned to support the attack on _Badajoz_. The battalion reached Albuhera on the 6th of April, on the night of which Badajoz was stormed and carried. The enemy being thus thwarted in all his views against the south, in which the principal part of the British troops was assembled, made a sudden invasion of the north of Portugal, and advanced as far as Castello Branco. The sixth division was in consequence moved with the utmost rapidity in that direction, but on its approach the enemy retired, and the division again returned to the south, the THIRTY-SIXTH taking up cantonments at Castello de Vide on the 30th of April. On the 5th May 1812, Lieut.-Colonel Lewis Davies arrived, and assumed the command of the THIRTY-SIXTH; towards the end of the month Major William Cross, who had been in very bad health for several weeks, proceeded to join the second battalion in England.