CHAPTER VI.

THE TALE BEGINS.

The morning after the battle of Salamanca (through which I passed unscathed) the regiment of dragoons to which I belonged (forming part of Anson’s brigade), together with Bock’s Germans, was ordered to follow on the traces of the flying French, who had retired across the River Tormes.  Though we started at daylight, we did not come up with their rear-guard until noon.  It consisted of a strong force of horse and foot, and made a stand near La Serna; but the cavalry, who had received a severe lesson on the previous day, bolted before we could cross swords with them.  The infantry, however, remained firm, and forming square, faced us like men.  The order was then given to charge; and when the two brigades broke into a gallop and thundered down the slope, they raised so thick a cloud of dust that all we could see of the enemy was the glitter of their bayonets and the flash of their musket-fire.  Saddles were emptied both to the right and left of me, and one of the riderless horses, maddened by a wound in the head, dashed wildly forward, and leaping among the bayonets and lashing out furiously with his hind-legs, opened a way into the square.  I was the first man through the gap, and engaged the French colonel in a hand-to-hand combat.  At the very moment just as I gave him the point in his throat he cut open my shoulder, my horse, mortally hurt by a bayonet thrust, fell, half rolling over me and crushing my leg.

As I lay on the ground, faint with the loss of blood and unable to rise, some of our fellows rode over me, and being hit on the head by one of their horses, I lost consciousness.  When I came to myself the skirmish was over, nearly the whole of the French rear-guard had been taken prisoners or cut to pieces, and a surgeon was dressing my wounds.  This done, I was removed in an ambulance to Salamanca.

The historic old city, with its steep, narrow streets, numerous convents, and famous university, had been well-nigh ruined by the French, who had pulled down half the convents and nearly all the colleges, and used the stones for the building of forts, which, a few weeks previously, Wellington had bombarded with red-hot shot.

The hospitals being crowded with sick and wounded, I was billeted in the house of a certain Senor Don Alberto Zamorra, which (probably owing to the fact of its having been the quarters of a French colonel) had not taken much harm, either during the French occupation of the town or the subsequent siege of the forts.

Don Alberto gave me a hearty, albeit a dignified welcome, and being a Spanish gentleman of the old school, he naturally placed his house, and all that it contained, at my disposal.  I did not, of course, take this assurance literally, and had I not been on the right side, I should doubtless have met with a very different reception.  All the same, he made a very agreeable host, and before I had been his guest many days we became fast friends.