“In this way, the governor, with lieutenant Gurwood and the two officers I have mentioned still clinging to my arms, the whole party moved towards the rampart. Having found when there, that in the confusion incident to such a scene I had lost as it were by accident that prize which was actually within my reach, and which I had justly considered as my own, in the chagrin of the moment I turned upon my heel and left the spot. The following day, in company with captain Lindsay of the eighty-eighth regiment I waited upon colonel Pakenham, then assistant adjutant-general to the third division, to know if my name had been mentioned by general Picton as having led the advance of the right brigade. He told me that it had and I therefore took no further notice of the circumstance, feeling assured that I should be mentioned in the way of which all officers in similar circumstances must be so ambitious. My chagrin and disappointment may be easily imagined when lord Wellington’s dispatches reached the army from England to find my name altogether omitted, and the right brigade deprived of their just meed of praise.”—“Sir, it is evident that the tendency of this note” (colonel Gurwood’s note quoted from the Despatches) “is unavoidably, though I do him the justice to believe by no means intentionally upon colonel Gurwood’s part, to impress the public with the belief that he was himself the first British officer that entered the citadel of Ciudad Rodrigo, consequently the one to whom its garrison surrendered. This impression the language he employs is the more likely to convey, inasmuch as to his exertions and good fortune in this particular instance he refers the whole of his professional success, to which he points the attention of the future aspirant as a pledge of the rewards to be expected from similar efforts to deserve them. To obviate this impression and in bare justice to the right brigade of the third division and, as a member of it, to myself, I feel called on to declare that though I do not claim for that brigade exclusively the credit of forcing the defences of the great breach, the left brigade having joined in it contrary to the intention of lord Wellington under the circumstances stated, yet I do declare on the word of a man of honour, that _I was the first individual who effected the descent from the main breach into the streets of the town, that I preceded the advance into the body of the place, that I was the first who entered the citadel, and that the enemy there assembled had surrendered to myself and party before lieutenant Gurwood came up_. Referring to the inference which colonel Gurwood has been pleased to draw from his own good fortune as to the certainty and value of the rewards awaiting the exertions of the British soldier, permit me, sir, in bare justice to myself to say that at the time I volunteered the forlorn hope on this occasion, I was senior lieutenant of my own regiment consequently the first for promotion.