ild was deprived of
its father or mother, or even of both parents, and many were the
parents who had lost their children; and if any had accumulated a
little fortune then it must have been lost, being ever liable to be
plundered by the soldiery.

It must be said, however, that certainly the Spaniards and likewise
the Portuguese behaved on their part very cruelly to the enemy's
wounded, prisoners, or stragglers. I myself was witness to one of
their barbarous acts. They had laid a ring of straw round a wounded
Frenchman and set fire to it, and when the poor man tried to crawl
out, he was only received with a pitchfork which sent him again into
the centre. We soon made the Portuguese fly by firing in amongst them;
but when we came up to the poor man, his hair, fingers, and face were
fearfully burnt already. He implored us not to leave him, but we were
obliged to, and no doubt either the Portuguese returned and killed
him, or else he died of the injuries he had sustained at their hands,
or from the wounds that had before disabled him.

These barbarities, however, the enemy brought on themselves by dealing
out the same coin, for they would go on foraging parties, and perhaps
find a whole family or more together trying to protect their very
subsistences, when they would kill the males, serve the females not
much better, and carry off everything they could lay their hands on if
of any value. Sometimes, however, they were overpowered in these
freaks, and then they suffered just as bad a fate as I showed just
now; which, after all, is not much to be wondered at.

I am sorry to say, however, that we ourselves were not quite free from
the charge of depredations, though we did not carry them on to the
extent of bloodshed. An instance of this in which I was myself mixed
up happened during our stay at this very place Guinaldo.

We were quartered nearly twenty in number in two upper rooms of a
house, of which the family inhabited the lower part. Our beds, as
usual, consisted chiefly of straw. An Irish comrade of ours, by name
Harding, whom we named Pig Harding, owing to his always being on the
look out for any cheap pieces he could lay hands on, was quartered in
the same house, and we had not been there many days before he found
about thirty pounds of sausages curled round the bottom of a large
earthen jar that contained at least ten or twelve gallons of olive
oil, the sausages having evidently been placed there either to keep,
o