"An English army is, perhaps, generally speaking, under stricter discipline than any other in the world; but in proportion as they are held tight while they are in hand, if circumstances occur to give them liberty I know of no army more difficult to restrain when once broke loose. A reason may perhaps be assigned for it in part. On such occasions as this siege, where they were long and much exposed to fatigue almost insupportable, to the most trying scenes of difficulty and danger, which were generally borne with cheerfulness and alacrity, they perhaps reasoned with themselves and one another in this manner,--that, as they had borne so much and so patiently to get possession of the place, it was but fair that they should have some indulgence when their work and trials were crowned with success, especially as the armies of other powers make it a rule generally to give an assaulted fortress up to plunder. They had also become quite reckless of life from so long exposure to death; but an English army cannot plunder like the French. The latter keep themselves more sober and look more to the solid and substantial benefit to be derived from it, while the former sacrifice everything to drink, and when once in a state of intoxication, with all the bad passions set loose at the same time, I know not what they will hesitate to perpetrate. The reader will judge of the state of our soldiers who had been engaged in the siege when Lord Wellington found it absolutely necessary to order in a Portuguese brigade to force the stragglers out of the town at the point of the bayonet." Major Rice's next letter was written on the _10th April 1812, from Camp in front of the Albuhera River, Beresford's position of the late bloody fight_--