[Footnote 2: Their code of military law, their pay, provisions, arms and accoutrements were the same as in the line; and they often marched three or four hundred miles at a sweep! In summer they went into camp, or did garrison duty; and each company possessed a _bat-horse_ with a pack-saddle, to carry the _iron camp kettles_.] [Footnote 3: Now the rifle-brigade.] [Footnote 4: Sir John Moore offered commissions to Lieutenants Booth, Temple, and myself of the York. The two former joined the 52nd; but, as my brother fancied that I was too young and as I was not my own master, I was obliged to submit to his decision. Lieut. O-Reilly also entered the rifle-corps and was subsequently killed on the river Coa in Portugal; and Lieut. Booth was killed at the storming of Badajoz in Spain.] [Footnote 5: The pelisse was subsequently introduced, and a soldier clad in (green tartan) the highland costume, carried a small standard. The three light regiments increased to seven battalions during the war; 43rd _two_; 52nd _two_; rifles _three_.] [Footnote 6: Trafalgar and Austerlitz.] [Footnote 7: Now hussars.] [Footnote 8: My brother and the same officer had a dispute eight months after this affair. They met; and at the first fire my brother received his adversary's hall through the upper part of his thigh, but eventually recovered.] [Footnote 9: In that month the first battalion marched from Colchester to Harwich to embark for Portugal with the 52nd and the Rifle corps, under Major General R. Craufurd, and joined the army in Spain the day after the battle of Talavera de la Reyna, having made a forced march in good order, in hopes of participating in that sanguinary battle, where they found the remnant of those men who had been left sick or wounded (in the battalion of detachments) in Portugal after Vimiera, and who had been engaged at the passage of the Douro near Oporto, and at Talavera. The 43rd had upwards of one hundred men killed in that battle; and of officers, brigade Major Gardner killed, and Lieutenant Brown wounded,—the latter now commanding the second battalion Rifle brigade.] CHAPTER II. Scene of embarkation for foreign service at Deal—A character—Force and objects of the expedition—Arrival off Walcheren—Siege and capture of Flushing—Disastrous sickness among the troops—Evacuation of Walcheren, with the author's adventure on the occasion—The return to England—Napoleon's situation at that period. In June 1809 we left Colchester with other corps, for the purpose of embarkation; our route lay through Chelmsford, Gravesend, Maidstone, to Shorncliff barracks (in Kent) placed on the summit of a hill extending to the verge of the white cliffs overhanging the sea, and commanding a clear view of the straits of Dover, and the opposite coast of France.