All the hospitals in the rear were crowded, and Salamanca itself, in which there were six thousand sick and wounded, besides French prisoners, was the very abode of misery. The soldiers endured much during the first two or three days after the battle, and the inferior officers’ sufferings were still more heavy and protracted. They had no money, and many sold their horses and other property to sustain life; some actually died of want, and though Wellington, hearing of this, gave orders that they should be supplied from the purveyor’s stores in the same manner as the soldiers, the relief came late. It is a common, yet erroneous notion, that the English system of hospitals in the Peninsula was admirable, and that the French hospitals were neglected. Strenuous and unceasing exertions were made by lord Wellington and the chiefs of the medical staff to form good hospital establishments, but the want of money, and still more the want of previous institutions, foiled their utmost efforts. Now there was no point of warfare which more engaged Napoleon’s attention than the care of his sick and wounded; and he being monarch as well as general, furnished his hospitals with all things requisite, even with luxuries. Under his fostering care also, baron Larrey justly celebrated, were it for this alone, organized the establishment called the hospital “_Ambulance_;” that is to say, waggons of a peculiar construction, well horsed, served by men trained and incorporated as soldiers, and subject to a strict discipline. Rewarded for their courage and devotion like other soldiers they were always at hand, and whether in action or on a march, ready to pick up, to salve, and to carry off wounded men; and the astonishing rapidity with which the fallen French soldiers disappeared from a field of battle attested the excellence of the institution.