[11] Guarda lies on the top of a high hill; we were much fatigued in ascending it, and entered the town with empty stomachs, but we were agreeably surprised to find that the French had left their dinners for us ready cooked, as in their haste they had left them on the fire in the different houses where they had been lodged. In one house where some of their officers were quartered, and had been obliged to retreat from table, after it was laid for dinner, some wag placed a mule’s head in the centre, with a label in its mouth on which was written ‘POUR MONS. JEAN BULL’ THE WAR IN THE PENINSULA: A CONTINUATION OF RECOLLECTIONS OF THE EVENTFUL LIFE OF A SOLDIER. CHAPTER I. The night we passed in the encampment at Sabugal was uncommonly dark, and at intervals the rain fell in torrents; fires had been kindled in the hollow trunks of some large chestnut trees, which, burning up as high as the branches, illuminated them to the very top. The flickering, lurid glare which these fiery columns threw on the naked bodies of the slain, the indistinct objects in the back ground, and the groups of soldiers which flitted around them, presented a scene at once sublime and picturesque; it looked like the midnight orgies of some supernatural beings. Next morning we fell in at daylight, and, in a short time after, pursued our march by the same route the French had taken the preceding day. The ground was covered with gum cistus, which had been previously burned, either through accident, or to serve some purpose, among which they had left visible marks of their confused flight, in the torn pieces of clothing and broken arms which strewed their line of march. They continued their retreat without halting until they reached Ciudade Roderigo, a fortified town on the Spanish frontier, at which place, having crossed the Agueda, they made a stand and concentrated their force. In consequence of this our army also halted, and, in a few days after, our regiment was quartered in a Portuguese village within some miles of them.