xperiences of military life were indeed but little
encouraging. I joined the army in the disastrous retreat from Burgos.
What a shock to all my cherished notions of a campaign! How sadly
different to my ideas of the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious
war! I remember well we first came up with the retiring forces on the
morning of the 4th of November. The day broke heavily; masses of dark
and weighty clouds drifted across the sky. The ground was soaked with
rain, and a cold, chilling wind swept across the bleak plain, and moaned
dismally in the dark pine-woods. Our party, which consisted of drafts
from the Fiftieth, Twenty-seventh, and Seventy-first regiments, were
stationed in a few miserable hovels on the side of the highroad from
Madrid to Labeyos. By a mistake of the way we had missed a body of
troops on the preceding day, and were now halted here in expectation
of joining some of the corps retiring on the Portuguese frontier. Soon
after daybreak a low rumbling sound, at first supposed to be the noise
of distant cannonading, attracted our attention; but some stragglers
coming up soon after, informed us that it proceeded from tumbrels and
ammunition-waggons of Sir Lowry Cole's brigade, then on the march.
The news was scarcely communicated, when the head of a column appeared
topping the hill.

As they came nearer, we remarked that the men did not keep their ranks,
but strayed across the road from side to side; some carried their
muskets by the sling, others on the shoulder; some leaned on their
companions, as though faint and sick; and many there were whose savage
looks and bloated features denoted drunkenness. The uniforms were torn
and ragged; several of the men had no shoes, and some even had lost
their caps and shakos, and wore handkerchiefs bound round their heads.
Among these the officers were almost undistinguishable; fatigue,
hardship, and privation had levelled them with the men, and discipline
scarcely remained in that disorganised mass. On they came, their eyes
bent only on the long vista of road that lay before them. Some, silent
and sad, trudged on side by side; others, maddened by drink or wild with
the excitement of fever, uttered frightful and horrible ravings. Some
flourished their bayonets, and threatened all within their reach; and
denunciations of their officers and open avowals of desertion were
heard on every side as they went. The bugle sounded a halt as the column
reached the little hamle