It is necessary now to turn to Marshal Beresford’s force, with which was Major Dickson, now serving in command of the Portuguese Artillery. It had been hoped that this army would reach Badajoz in sufficient time to raise the French siege of that city; but a slight delay in Beresford’s movements, combined with undoubted treachery on the part of the garrison, frustrated this hope, and rendered it necessary to prepare for a siege of the city with its now French garrison. From this time, the reader will enjoy an advantage which cannot be overrated, and which appears now for the first time in any narrative of the Peninsular War. Sir Alexander Dickson was not merely a great Artilleryman, but also a most methodical and industrious collector and registrar of details which came under his notice. During the various sieges in the Peninsula which were conducted by him, he kept diaries mentioning even the most trifling facts: and on his return to England he procured from General Macleod the whole of the long series of letters which he had written to him between 1811 and 1814. The mass of information which he thus possessed was arranged, and at his death the whole passed into the hands of his son, Sir Collingwood Dickson. In the hope that the papers of the most prominent Artilleryman of the Duke of Wellington’s armies would be useful in framing a history of the Corps in which he spent his life, Sir Collingwood kindly placed them at the disposal of the author of this history. Priceless under any circumstances, they are even more so from the fact that several of the letter-books of the Deputy-Adjutant-General’s department during the Peninsular War have been mislaid;--and these refer chiefly to the periods covered by the manuscripts of Sir Alexander Dickson. On the latter, therefore, the narrative of the period between 1811 and 1814 will be chiefly based: and it is hoped that the reproduction of the opinions and statements of one, so able to express the former with confidence and the latter with authority, will be a welcome addition to the literature of England’s wars in the Peninsula.[25]