Some companies of the Regiment were thrown out as skirmishers to support the 14th Light Dragoons. One of these brought in a French prisoner, badly wounded, who in conversation with Lieutenant Gardiner, who was a proficient in French, was vehement in asserting that he would not have been taken, had he had a better horse. On this being repeated to his captor, he said to Gardiner: ‘Then, sir, tell him if he had the best horse in France I would bring him prisoner if he stood to fight me.’ The prisoner assured Gardiner that his horse had not been unsaddled for a week; and the state of his back, when the saddle was removed, too surely corroborated his assertion. The army was now ordered to retire; and the country being an open plain was very favourable for cavalry. The British troops therefore were formed in quarter-distance column ready to form square at any moment. The Regiment marched in this way for upwards of ten miles, with all the regularity and steadiness of a field-day; taking up distant points to march on; and avoiding the villages in order not to lose time in passing through them. For it was a race between the two armies to gain some high land beyond the Guareña. And the French moved on our right during the whole day; often coming within 500 yards of our flank. Occasionally the enemy opened a cannonade; but on the whole this day’s march was effected without fighting. The men, oppressed by the heat, and suffocated by the clouds of dust which arose from the sandy plain, were tormented with thirst. But there was no time to halt, nor water at hand to quench it. At last, arriving at the edge of this table-land, they looked down into the vale of the Guareña, and the Riflemen hurried their pace to reach the water. The French instantly unlimbered their guns on the height above and sent some round shot among them. But our men drank of the muddy stream as they passed through it, and suffered little from the cannonade; and they bivouacked on the high ground beyond the river.