Such is the story, and there is little doubt that when Sam Rice wrote, on the 16th June, that he was in temporary command, as Mainwaring was sick, he knew perfectly well that his commanding officer, although he certainly had been invalided to Lisbon, had been virtually relieved of his command. But the authorities, evidently unwilling to be too severe on an officer who had performed good services for his country, but who had erred through excess of zeal, so arranged matters that, on the 13th June 1811, Lieut.-Colonel Mainwaring exchanged to the half-pay of the 26th Foot (with Lieut.-Colonel Mitchell) and was appointed commandant of Hilsea Barracks in England. The matter, of course, had to be referred home, and so took some time, and in the meanwhile Colonel Mainwaring had taken his regiment to the camp before Badajoz, and had been hurt in the trenches. Now, as a matter of fact, Sir John Colborne was wrong in saying that "the French never came near them," for it is perfectly certain that the 7th Division was posted in a most perilous position, and was very seriously attacked, although certainly the 51st was not so desperately engaged as were some of the other regiments. The division, numbering some four thousand infantry (of whom the 51st and 85th were the only British regiments), and supported by fourteen hundred cavalry, was detached two miles from the main position, on practically open ground, and every one in the division knew that since Wellington's left flank was impregnable, Massena would, of necessity, direct his attack on the right flank. Wellington himself was well aware of this, but either he did not anticipate so vast a turning movement as his adversary eventually launched, or he had intended that the 7th Division should only hold the outlying position assigned to it long enough to induce Massena to develop his attack against it. Be that as it may, the fact remains that, at one time, the 7th Division was threatened by twenty thousand of Massena's infantry and nearly the whole of his masses of cavalry, and for a while was in imminent danger of being cut off and annihilated. Wellington, of course, set matters right as soon as he realised that the situation was becoming critical, but there were some who imagined that he was intensely annoyed at having made faulty dispositions in the first instance, and that he endeavoured to justify himself in the eyes of the 7th Division by venting his wrath on the colonel of the 51st. At the same time the burning of the colours was an extraordinary procedure on the part of the colonel, and it is not easy to understand how it was that the other senior officers of the regiment acquiesced in it, if, indeed, they did so. When the circumstances became known to Wellington, he was bound to take notice of what had occurred; but apparently the officers of the 51st considered that he was unduly severe in treating their colonel's action as anything more than an error of judgment, for