unless my wound ceased bleeding I should not long survive; this, with a little contrivance, I managed to effect. But the most intolerable sensation was that of raging thirst; all my worldly substance, ten times valued, would 179have been no price at all for a draught of water. Meantime the frost was so severe, that my limbs appeared to be deprived of flexibility and motion. In the course of the night, hearing a deep moan at a little distance, I called out, ‘Who is there?’ and was answered, ‘It’s me, Tom.’ The voice was familiar, and I found it was that of Patrick Murphy, an old comrade and countryman in Dalzell’s company, who had fought most nobly through several campaigns. He had been miserably burnt while endeavouring to force the breach, and suffered extremely. In the course of a day or two we were placed in military spring-wagons, and conveyed to Elvas. We were afterwards transferred to bullock-carts, a mode of conveyance not remarkable either for comfort or speed; the carriages were clumsily constructed, and ensured very little in the way of easy riding; added to which, we moved only at the rate of about one mile an hour. I have to add with sorrow that the conquest of Badajos was attended with excesses that tend to tarnish the soldier’s character. All, indeed, were not alike, for hundreds risked and many lost their lives in striving to stop the violence; but the madness of ungovernable licentiousness generally prevailed; and as the worst men were leaders here, all the dreadful passions of human nature were displayed. Shameless rapacity, brutal intemperance, savage lust, cruelty and murder, shrieks and piteous lamentations, groans, shouts, curses, the hissing of fires bursting from the houses, the crashing of doors and windows, and the report of muskets used in violence, resounded for two days and nights in the devoted town. Five thousand men and officers fell during the siege; and of these, including seven hundred Portuguese, three thousand five hundred had been stricken in the assault,—sixty officers and more than seven hundred men being slain on the spot. Five generals were wounded; about six hundred men and officers fell in the escalade of San Vincente, as many at the castle, and more than two thousand at the breaches, each division there losing about twelve hundred. Let any man picture to himself this frightful carnage taking place in a space of less than a hundred square yards. Let him consider that the slain died not all suddenly, nor by one manner of death; that some perished by steel, some by shot, some by water, that some were crushed and mangled by heavy weights, some trampled upon, some dashed to atoms by fiery explosions; that for hours this destruction was endured without shrinking; and that the town was won at last. Let any man consider this, and he must admit that a British army is by no means deficient either in physical or moral excellence. 180 CASTLE OF BADAJOS.