On the 14th the Regiment left Salamanca, and crossing the Tormes, took post on the heights near the Arapiles, and occupied the ground of the great victory of July 22. It was thought indeed that a second battle would be fought on the same spot; but the enemy’s forces being greatly superior to ours, Lord Wellington resolved to continue the retreat. And on the 15th, about three o’clock, the Regiment resumed its march and bivouacked that night in a wood about four miles from Salamanca. The weather still was dreadful; the rain had made the roads ankle-deep with mud; and streams, which in better weather might have been stepped over, had swollen to torrents which the men had to pass through knee-deep. They were also without provisions; and ravenous with hunger, they searched for something to eat. They found some bullocks, dead or half dead, which had fallen on the road, unable to drag the carts any further. These were immediately cut up with their swords and eaten half-toasted at the camp fires. For the soldiers were famished, and the wet wood kindled too slowly for them to wait. Some, too, groped about the wood on their hands and knees, searching for the acorns which had fallen from the oaks and cork trees, and devoured them voraciously; and though bitter and unpalatable, they stayed the pangs of hunger. Nor were these wants confined to the men; few of the officers had even a biscuit; and Costello relates how he saw Lord Charles Spencer, then a Second-Lieutenant in the Regiment, standing on some branches to keep him out of the wet, and earnestly watching a few acorns which he was trying to roast in the embers. As the only means of keeping themselves dry, the men cut down the branches of the trees and lay on them. And as the Regiment formed part of the rear-guard on this retreat, it was of course among the first under arms in the morning and the last at night, often not reaching the bivouack till some hours after the other regiments were in theirs. On this and the preceding day, the French appeared in force on their right flank, threatening the communication of the army with Ciudad Rodrigo. On the 16th the retreat was resumed in the same weather and under the same privations. Many of the men lost their shoes in the sticky slime of the roads, and had to march barefoot. The French cavalry hovered close behind the Regiment, but did not attack; and after dark the Riflemen bivouacked, again glad that in a wood they had at least acorns to assuage their hunger.