When the duke of Dalmatia took the command of the pursuing army, Hope’s and Fraser’s divisions were, as I have said, at Villa Franca, sir David Baird’s at Bembibre, the reserve and cavalry at Cambarros, six miles from Astorga. Behind Cambarros the mountains of Gallicia rose abruptly, but there was no position, because, after the first rise at the village of Rodrigatos, the ground continually descended to Calcabellos, a small town, only four miles from Villa Franca, and the old road of Foncevadon and Ponteferrada, which turned the whole line, was choked with the advancing columns of the enemy. The reserve and the cavalry marched during the night to Bembibre: on their arrival Baird’s division proceeded to Villa Franca, but the immense wine-vaults of Bembibre had such temptations, that many hundred of his men remained behind inebriated; the followers of the army crowded the houses, and a number of Romana’s disbanded men were mixed with this heterogeneous mass of marauders, drunkards, muleteers, women, and children; the weather was dreadful, and, notwithstanding the utmost exertions of the general-in-chief, when the reserve marched the next morning, the number of those unfortunate wretches was not diminished. Leaving a small guard to protect them, sir John Moore proceeded to Calcabellos; but scarcely had the reserve marched out of the village, when some French cavalry appeared. In a moment the road was filled with the miserable stragglers, who came crowding after the troops, some with loud shrieks of distress and wild gestures, others with brutal exclamations; many, overcome with fear, threw away their arms. Those who preserved theirs were too stupidly intoxicated to fire; and kept reeling to and fro, alike insensible to their danger and to their disgrace. The enemy’s horsemen perceiving this confusion, bore down at a gallop, broke through the disorderly mob, cutting to the right and left as they passed, and riding so close to the columns, that the infantry were forced to halt in order to check their audacity. At Calcabellos the reserve took up a position, and the general-in-chief went on to Villa Franca. In that town great excesses had been committed by the preceding divisions; the magazines were plundered, the bakers driven away from the ovens, the wine stores forced, and the commissaries prevented from making the regular distributions; the doors of the houses were broken, and the scandalous insubordination of the soldiers proved that a discreditable relaxation of discipline on the part of the officers had taken place. The general immediately arrested this disorder, caused one man taken in the act of plundering a magazine to be shot in the market-place, and issued severe orders to prevent a recurrence of such inexcusable conduct, after which he returned to the reserve at Calcavellos.