On entering the town of Vittoria, they found it filled with French and British wounded; and the numbers were increasing, as the waggons went to and fro between the field and town, which soon became converted into an hospital. Cries, groans, and thrilling exclamations of suffering rang from every house; and men were lying in ranks below the piazzas of the market-place, waiting till their wounds could be looked to; and in every street lay scores of weary and maimed soldiers, who, unable to proceed further, had sunk down bleeding and expiring, helpless as babes, without a hand to close their eyes. Stuart’s wound was of too little importance to procure immediate attendance, all the surgeons being hard at work, with their shirt sleeves turned up, hewing off legs and arms mercilessly, as was their will and pleasure in those days. On with the tourniquet, and off with the limb, was the mode then; any attempt to reduce a fracture being considered a waste of time, and a style of cure troublesome alike to patient and physician. After searching about for some time to find a son of Esculapius unemployed, but without success, they adjourned to a café immediately within the Santa Clara gate. The large drinking-room was crowded with officers, some of whom had got their scars dressed, and, in defiance of the orders of _el medico_, were quaffing horn after horn of the country wine, in honour of the victory. Seaton, with his arm slung, was thus employed in one corner with an officer of the 50th, whose head was wrapped in a bloody handkerchief. Many others were in the same trim; and the conversation consisted of loud and boisterous observations and criticisms on this and that movement—the advance of one division, the retreat of another—promotion, brevet, thanks of parliament, a medal,—and so on; and all were lavish in their animadversions on the 18th Hussars, for making so free with the military chest. Their observations were often mingled with loud and reckless military merriment, and an occasional hearty malediction on some wound which would not cease bleeding, or an exclamation of pain at the twinges it gave. Many Spanish officers were sitting over chess-tables, absorbed in their favourite national game, forgetting altogether, in the interest which it excited, the battle so recently gained, and which was of so much importance to the liberties of their country. But it has been truly remarked by some one, that, give the Spaniard his cigar, his sun-shine, his _querido_, and amusements, and it is all one to him whether Spain is ruled by a Solon or a Caligula. In another corner of the drinking-room, a Spanish colonel was sitting coolly with a napkin and brass bason under his chin, undergoing the operation of being shaved by the senior surgeon of his regiment, as it is, or was, the duty of that officer to take off the colonel’s beard every morning, or whenever required. So much for the dignity of the medical profession in Spain.