“The evening before the affair of Rolica, there was every reason to believe the regiment would be among the first troops engaged the next morning, and there were two bad subjects under sentence of a court-martial for petty plundering. Colonel Lake, when he formed his regiment in the evening for the punishment of the two culprits, knew full well that every man was satisfied they deserved it; but he did not say that. He spoke to the hearts of his soldiers; he told them he flogged those men not alone because they deserved it; but that he might deprive them of the honour of going into action with their comrades in the morning, and that he might not prevent the guard who was stationed over them from participating in it. The regiment was in much too high a state of discipline to admit of a word being said, but they were repeated all the evening from mouth to mouth; and the poor fellows who were flogged declared to me that they would willingly on their knees at his feet, if they dared, have begged, as the greatest favour he could bestow, to be allowed to run the risk of being shot first, with the certainty of being flogged afterwards if they escaped.” Mr. Guthrie thus describes his death:--“A narrow steep ravine seemed the only accessible part--and up this Lake without further hesitation, led his grenadiers on horseback. The whole regiment followed with unexampled devotion and heroism, and gained the summit, but not without the loss of three hundred men in the desperate conflict, which took place almost hand to hand in the olive grove half way up the hill. Broken and overpowered by numbers, Lake fell, and his soldiers would have been driven down, if the 9th regiment had not rushed up with equal ardour, led by a no less gallant soldier, Colonel Stewart. The two regiments formed on the crown of the hill, supported on their right by the 5th, which had been less opposed, and the French retired, finding that their right was by this time turned. Colonel Lake, on horseback on the top of the hill, seemed to have a charmed life. One French officer, of the name of Bellegarde, said afterwards that he had fired seven shots at him. Once he seemed to stagger as if he was hit, but it was only at the seventh shot he fell. It is probable he was right, for he was wounded in the back of the neck slightly; but the ball which killed him passed quite through from side to side beneath the arms; I think he must have fallen dead. The serjeant-major, Richards, seeing his colonel fall, stood over him, like another Ajax, until he himself fell wounded in thirteen places by shot and bayonet. I gave him some water in his dying moments, and his last words were, ‘I should have died happy if our gallant colonel had been spared’--words that were reiterated by almost every wounded man.”