Note 643 — SECTION XVI: CHAPTER VI

‘I wish I could assert with truth that this retrogression was confined to our Spanish allies. But the truth must be told, and I regret to say that stragglers from the British army were among them, taking a similar direction to the rear. As they passed, they circulated reports of a most disheartening nature.’ Col. Leach’s Rough Sketches, p. 81. He was with Craufurd’s brigade, then coming up by forced marches from Plasencia, which met the fugitives near Oropesa on the morning of the twenty-eighth. ‘The road was crowded with fugitives, Spaniards innumerable, and lots of English commissary clerks, paymasters and sutlers, to say nothing of a few soldiers who said they were sick.’ Autobiography of Sir George Napier, p. 108.