Note 504 — SECTION XXI: CHAPTER V

Wellington to Chas. Stuart, Dispatches, vi. 506. D’Urban’s invaluable diary has the note. ‘Oct. 11: ’Tis difficult to account for all this, which must be vexatious to the Commander-in-Chief, who, aware of the importance of the heights in front of Sobral, must have wished to keep them for the present.... Oct. 12: In the morning the enemy was no more to be seen, and what we should never have given up, we were fortunately permitted to re-occupy. But at nightfall the French, with about six battalions, retook the height and town of Sobral.’