re to my report, to
have you shot." He turned on his heel. A sergeant with a couple of
grenadiers entered, and I was consigned for the night to the
provost-marshal. How anxiously I spent that night, I need not say. I
was in the hands of violent men, exasperated by the popular
resistance, and accustomed to disregard life. I braced myself up to
meet my untoward catastrophe, and determined at least not to disgrace
my country by helpless solicitation. I wrote a few letters, committed
myself to a protection above the passions and vices of man, wrapped my
cloak round me, and sank into a sound slumber.

I was aroused by a discharge of cannon, and found the camp in
commotion. The Spaniards, under Reding and Castanos, had, as the
colonel anticipated, fallen upon our line of march at daybreak, and
cut off a large portion of the baggage-train. It had been loaded with
the church-plate, and general plunder of Cordova; and the avarice of
the French had obviously involved them in formidable difficulty. But,
even in the universal tumult, the importance of my seizure was not
forgotten; and I was ordered to the rear in charge of a guard. The
action now began on all sides; the cannonade rapidly deepening on the
flank and centre of the French position, and the musketry already
beginning to rattle on various points of the line. From the height on
which I stood, the whole scene lay beneath my eye; and nothing could
have been better worth the speculation of any man--who was not under
sentence of being shot as soon as the struggle was over!

I was aware of the reputation of the French general. He held a high
name among the _braves_ of the imperial army for the last ten years,
and he had been foremost everywhere. In the desperate Italian
campaign against the Austrians and Russians; in the victorious
campaign of Austerlitz; in the sanguinary campaign of Eylau--Dupont
was one of the most daring of generals of brigade. But his pillage of
Cordova had roused the Spanish wrath into fury; and the effort to
carry off his plunder made it impossible for him to resist a vigorous
attack, even with his twenty thousand veterans. He had indulged
himself in Cordova, until the broken armies of the south had found
time to rally; and a force of fifty thousand men was now rushing down
upon his centre. The hills, as far as the eye could range, were
covered with the armed peasantry, moving like dark clouds over their
sides, and descending by thousands to the field