“_The outrages committed by the British soldiers, belonging to this army, have become so enormous, and they have produced an effect on the minds of the people of the country, so injurious to the cause, and likely to be so dangerous to the army itself, that I request your Lordship’s early attention to the subject. I am sensible that the best measures to be adopted on this subject are those of prevention, and I believe there are few officers who have paid more attention to the subject than I have done, and I have been so far successful, as that few outrages are committed by the soldiers who are with their regiments, after the regiments have been a short time in this country._” “_But in the extended system on which we are acting, small detachments of soldiers must be marched long distances, through the country, either as escorts, or returning from being escorts to prisoners, or coming from hospitals, &c. and notwithstanding that these detachments are never allowed to march, excepting under the command of an officer or more, in proportion to its size, and that every precaution is taken to provide for the regularity of their subsistence, there is no instance of the march of one of these detachments that outrages of every description are not committed, and I am sorry to say with impunity._” “_The guard-rooms are therefore crowded with prisoners, and the offences of which they have been guilty remain unpunished, to the destruction of the discipline of the army, and to the injury of the reputation of the country for justice. I have thought it proper to lay these circumstances before your lordship. I am about to move the army further forward into Spain, and I assure your lordship, that I have not a friend in that country, who has not written to me in dread of the consequences, which must result to the army, and to the cause from a continuance of these disgraceful irregularities, which I declare I have it not in my power to prevent._” To this should have been added, the insubordination, and the evil passions, awakened by the unchecked plunder of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos. But long had the English general complained of the bad discipline of his army, and the following extracts, from a letter dated a few months later, shew that his distrust at the present time was not ill-founded. After observing that the constitutions of the soldiers were so much shaken from disorders acquired by their service at Walcheren, or by their own irregularities, that a British army was almost a moving hospital, more than one-third or about twenty thousand men being sick, or attending upon the sick, he thus describes their conduct.