Note 711 — SECTION VIII: CHAPTER V

The stragglers’ battle in front of Betanzos is described by Adam Neale (p. 196), Blakeney (pp. 90, 91), and Steevens of the 20th (p. 70), as well as by Napier and the other historians. I find no account of it in Le Noble or the other French narrators, such as Naylies, St. Chamans, or Fantin des Odoards. Le Noble gives instead a wholly fictitious account of an engagement of Franceschi with English cavalry, in which the latter lost a thousand men and five guns (p. 34). As the cavalry had marched for Corunna before Franceschi came up, and lost only about 200 men in the whole campaign, I am quite at a loss to understand what can be the foundation of this romance.