_One man only_ was at the top of the left breach (the heaps of dead had, as a matter of course, rolled to the bottom), and that was one of the rifle corps who had succeeded in getting under the _chevaux-de-frise_. His head was battered to pieces, and his arms and shoulders torn asunder with bayonet wounds. Our batteries did not play on the ramparts that night after dark; but when the explosion took place, the whole of them opened with _blank cartridge_ in our rear—probably to frighten the enemy, or to make them keep down; but they were old soldiers, and not to be so done. Poor M'Leod, in his 27th year, was buried half a mile from the town, on the south side, nearly opposite our camp, on the slope of a hill. We did not like to take him to the miserable breach, where, from the warmth of the weather, the dead soldiers had begun to turn, and their blackened bodies had swollen enormously; we, therefore, laid him amongst some young springing corn; and, with sorrowful hearts, six of us (all that remained of the officers able to stand) saw him covered in the earth. His cap, all muddy, was handed to me, I being without one, with merely a handkerchief round my bruised head, one eye closed, and also a slight wound in my leg. The country was open. The dead, the dying, and the wounded were scattered abroad; some in tents, others exposed to the sun by day, and the heavy dew at night. With considerable difficulty, I found at length my friend, Lieutenant Madden, lying in a tent with his trowsers on and his shirt off, covered with blood, bandaged across the body to support his broken shoulder, laid on his back, and unable to move. He asked for his brother.—"Why does he not come to see me?" I turned my head away; for his gallant young brother (a captain of the 52nd) was amongst the slain! Captain Merry, of the 52nd, was sitting on the ground sucking an orange. He said, "How are you?—You see that _I_ am dying; a mortification has ensued." A grape-shot had shattered his knee; and he had told the doctor that he preferred death rather than to permit such a _good leg_ to be amputated. Another officer had just breathed his last between these two sufferers. The camp became a wilderness, some of the tents being thrown down, others vacant, and flapping in the wind, while the musketry still rattled in the town, announcing the wild rejoicing of our troops. [Footnote 18: Some Portuguese troops watched the right bank of the river on the side of Portugal, but, during the latter end of the siege, part of the fifth division under General Leith took that duty.] [Footnote 19: I have often been told, from undoubted authority, that this soldier was one of the first who entered the small breach at Rodrigo, and whose Stentorian voice rose above the din of arms.]