Having as such succeeded so immediately after to a company, I could scarcely expect nor did I ask further promotion at the time, but after many years of additional service, I did still conceive and do still maintain, that I was entitled to bring forward my services on that day as a ground for asking that step of rank which every officer leading a forlorn hope had received with the exception of myself. “May I, sir, appeal to your sense of justice in lending me your aid to prevent my being deprived of the only reward I had hitherto enjoyed, in the satisfaction of thinking that the services which I am now compelled most reluctantly to bring in some way to the notice of the public, had during the period that has since elapsed, never once been called in question. It was certainly hard enough that a service of this nature should have been productive of no advantage to me in my military life. I feel it however infinitely more annoying that I should now find myself in danger of being stript of any credit to which it might entitle me, by the looseness of the manner in which colonel Gurwood words his statement. I need not say that this danger is only the more imminent from his statement appearing in a work which as being published under the auspices of the duke of Wellington as well as of the Horse Guards, has at least the appearance of coming in the guise of an official authority,” “I agree most cordially with colonel Gurwood in the opinion he has expressed in his note, that he is himself an instance where reward and merit have gone hand in hand. I feel compelled however, for the reasons given to differ from him materially as to the precise ground on which he considers the honours and advantages that have followed his deserts to be not only the distinguished but the just and natural consequences of his achievements on that day. _I allude to the claim advanced by colonel Gurwood to be considered the individual by whom the governor of Ciudad Rodrigo was made prisoner of war._ It could scarcely be expected that at such a moment I could be aware that the sword which I received was not the governor’s being in fact that of one of his aide-de-camps. I repeat however that before lieutenant Gurwood and his party came up, the enemy had expressed their wish to surrender, that a sword was presented by them in token of submission and received by me as a pledge, on the honour of a British officer, that according to the laws of war, I held myself responsible for their safety as prisoners under the protection of the British arms. Not a shadow of resistance was afterwards made and I appeal to every impartial mind in the least degree acquainted with the rules of modern warfare, if under these circumstances I am not justified in asserting that before, and at the time lieutenant Gurwood arrived, the whole of the enemy’s garrison within the walls of the citadel, governor included, were both _de jure_ and _de facto_ prisoners to myself.