great lukewarmness on the part of several of the
Portuguese officers, while the rank and file were dispirited by the
fate of Ciudad Rodrigo, and by the fact that they had, as it seemed
to them, been deserted by the British army.

"I don't like the look of things, at all," he had said to Bull and
Ryan, the evening before the siege guns began their work. "In the
first place the defences will crumble, in no time, under the French
fire. In the second place, I don't think that the Portuguese, with
the exception of our own men, have any fight in them. Da Costa, the
lieutenant governor, openly declares that the place is indefensible,
and that it is simply throwing away the lives of the men to resist.
He is very intimate, I observe, with Bareiros, the chief of the
artillery. Altogether, things look very bad. Of course, we shall
stay here as long as the place resists; but I am afraid that won't
be for very long.

"I was speaking to Colonel Cox this afternoon. He is a brave man,
and with trustworthy troops would, I am sure, hold the town until
the last; but, unsupported as he is, he is in the hands of these
rascally Portuguese officers. I told him that, if he ordered me to
do so, I would undertake with my men to arrest the whole of them;
but he said that that would bring on a mutiny of all their troops;
and this, bad as the situation already was, would only make matters
much worse. I then suggested that, as the French are driving their
trenches towards those two old redoubts outside the wall, I would,
if he liked, place our force in them; and would undertake to hold
them, pointing out that if they fell into the hands of the enemy
they would soon mount their cannon there, and bring down the whole
wall facing in that direction.

"He quite agreed with that view of the case, but said that it would
be a very exposed position; still, as our fellows were certainly
the only trustworthy troops he had, he should be very glad if I
would undertake the defence at once, as the French were pushing
their approaches very fast towards them. I said that I was sure we
could hold them for some little time; and that, indeed, it seemed
to me that the French intended to bombard the town rather than to
breach the walls, knowing the composition of the garrison and,
perhaps, having intelligence that their courage would be so shaken,
by a heavy fire, that the place would surrender in a much shorter
time than it would take to breach the walls. According