The difficulty of the ground, both at Vimieiro and at Roriça, struck me as only inferior to that of the terrible Serra of Busaco, and the still more gigantic inequalities of the Pyrenees. In front of the little village of Vimieiro, sweetly situated in a valley watered by the silver stream of Maceira, rises a rugged and detached flat-topped hill, commanding the passes which stretch to the south and east. A fearful ravine, the scene of great carnage, separates a mountain, that sweeps in a crescent from the coast, from another range of heights over which passes the road from Vimieiro to Lourinham, and which returns to the coast with a sudden bend backwards, terminating there in a tall and precipitous cliff. The ground between the points where the two armies were posted is wooded and broken in an extraordinary degree, especially by the deep ravine above referred to, where Brennier was for a considerable time entangled. Kellerman’s reserves were posted in a pine wood. Our 43rd regiment, stationed amongst some vineyards, covered with ripening grapes, to which allusion is made in the text, for the battle was fought on the 21st August, 1808, maintained a fierce contest against the French grenadiers, whom they eventually scattered with a furious onset of the bayonet, the regiment suffering severely. On the crest of the ridge Solignac was equally defeated; the French artillery, taken and rescued for a time, were finally retaken, and their discomfited troops compelled to retreat. The glorious battle of Talavera was fought on the 28th July, 1809, when the “burning sun” described in the text was so fierce and scathing as to tempt the soldiers of both armies, before the commencement of the fight, down to the little brook which separated their positions, not far from the memorable hill which was the vital point of the action, where they quenched their thirst together, mingling without any attempt at mutual molestation, with a degree of reciprocal confidence which was not without something chivalrous in its character. I slaked my thirst at the same stream on my visit, and could not help smiling at the remark of a Spanish peasant, that that water to this hour is “_ensangrentada!_” I pointed to its limpid purity, which assuredly had nothing of the crimson hue. The mingling of the French and English troops at this stream for such a purpose reminded me of a passage in my life which occurred in 1836 at Compiègne in France, where the late lamented Duke of Orléans had formed a camp for military exercises, which I attended as a spectator. The heat was likewise then intolerable, and I slaked my thirst at a streamlet on the ground in the midst of scores of French soldiers, similarly employed, who assisted me with great politeness. At Talavera the French, posted near the Tagus, amongst some olive groves which were in full bloom at the period of my visit, commenced the battle with a tempest of bullets from no fewer than 80 pieces of artillery.