On the plains of Talavera de la Reyna, at the heights of Busaco, and by the green hill of Albuera, when the Anglo-Portuguese army fought Soult--that memorable hill, by whose slope, at the close of the terrible day, the men of our old 'Die Hards' of the 57th were seen lying in two distinct ranks, dead but victorious--the Seventh Cazadores, when wavering under the dreadful fire of the French infantry, and menaced by the heavy cavalry of Latour-Maubourg, were rallied in square by the bugle of José de Castro. He was 'ever foremost in the path of danger,' says the _Jornal de Commercio_ of Lisbon; 'and the notes of his bugle were heard in many of the desperate onsets and bayonet charges of those well-fought fields. In all these actions he did his duty; but his name ought ever to be remembered for a deed of valour, for which, at the time, he gained well-merited applause, and which was long afterwards passed from mouth to mouth whenever the terrible siege of Badajoz was mentioned.' It is to the third siege of the city that the paper refers. 'Give me your hand, José,' said the Viscount de Sa on one occasion. 'What a boy you are! You beat the trumpeter who blew two trumpets at once at the siege of Argos.' As yet he seemed to have a charmed life; no ball had ever touched him. He was a good, devout, and very grave boy, for, as Captain de Lobiera said, he believed 'that the spirit of his dead mother accompanied him wherever he went.' It was on the 6th of March, 1812, that the army of Wellington broke up from its cantonments, and, ten days after, crossed the Guadiana, and three divisions, under Beresford and Picton, at once invested Badajoz, then garrisoned by five thousand men under Generals Phillipon and Vaillant, whose tenacious resistance caused some uneasiness to the British leader, as a defeat under its walls might have seriously disarranged all his plans for the future. Before the Seventh Cazadores entered the trenches they had halted a few miles from Badajoz, after a long and harassing day's march. The rain fell in torrents that night. Amid the misty gloom, in the distance, the guns of the beleaguered city were seen to flash redly out upon the night, and weird was the glare of the port fires as they sputtered on the gusty wind. All that comfortless night, José, like the rest of his comrades, spent the weary hours in the open air. He placed his canteen on the ground, put his knapsack above it, and, thus improvising a seat, strove to sleep, with his greatcoat and blanket spread over his shoulders for warmth. And when the chill gray dawn came, he was so stiff that, at first, he could scarcely place the cold mouth of the bugle to his lips.