Soon after this change, an act of gross indiscipline occurred, which will afford a tolerable notion of some of the singular characters who held rank in the corps. A sergeant’s guard usually mounted in the sappers' barracks at Woolwich. One morning sergeant Millar was appointed to the new guard, and during the ceremony of “mounting,” was posted in front of it. Lieutenant Eaves, the officer on duty, gave the usual words of command. “Sergeant, to your guard, march!” Millar no sooner heard it, than he whirled his halberd in the air, and as every one stood amazed to see the upshot of this mad manœuvre, the pike turned point downwards and stuck in the earth. At this moment, to complete the extravaganza, Millar pitched on his hands, and with his legs towering erect in the air, paddled, with all the flexibility and steadiness of an acrobat, to his wondering guard! The siege of Cuidad Rodrigo began on the 8th and terminated on the 19th January when the fortress was carried by storm. In this siege eighteen rank and file of the royal military artificers were present, of whom one was killed and ten were wounded. In carrying on their duties they were sometimes annoyed by the presence of light balls thrown by the enemy into the sap. The instant they alighted some bold sappers, heedless of the peril they incurred, rushed to the spot, and in a few seconds extinguished them with sand-bags or smothered them by shovelling earth upon the flames.[183] The conduct of the party during the operations was praised by Lord Wellington.[184] ----- Footnote 183: Jones’s ‘Sieges,’ i. p. 369, 3rd edit., and note added by Colonel Harry D. Jones. Footnote 184: ‘Wellington Dispatches,’ 1845, v., p. 476. ----- To join the siege party, the fifth company second battalion of forty-one men, had been embodied at Alhandra from the different districts of Torres Vedras, and marched for Cuidad Rodrigo on the 2nd January. It had in charge a large assortment of intrenching tools to be used in the works before that fortress. The weather was bitterly cold, a considerable quantity of rain had fallen, and the roads were cut into deep ruts and covered with pools. Frequently the jaded mules dropped from fatigue; and to relieve them, the men were constantly compelled, either to lead them instead of the disaffected muleteers, or take the labour of the animals themselves. After a trying and toilsome journey of seventeen days, the company arrived in front of Cuidad Rodrigo on the night of the 19th January, but took no part in the storming.[185] ----- Footnote 185: Sir John Jones, in his ‘Sieges,’ i. p. 130, 2nd edit., records, by mistake, the arrival of the company on the 15th instead of the 19th January. -----