Note 207 — Chapter I

Most of these details are from two interesting dispatches of La Romana in the Foreign Office papers at the Record Office. They are dated from Chaves on Jan. 28 and Feb. 13. They are unpublished and seem to be unknown even to General Arteche, who has made such a splendid collection of the materials in the Spanish archives which bear on this obscure corner of the war. There was an English officer, Captain Brotherton, with the army of La Romana: but his reports, which Napier had evidently seen, are now no longer to be found. No doubt they were bound up in the January-March 1809 book of Portuguese dispatches, which since Napier’s day has disappeared from the Record Office, leaving no trace behind.