Note 656 — SECTION XXVIII: CHAPTER II

That this represents pretty accurately what happened is, I think, clear from the comparison of Codrington’s very full letter to General Graham (see his Life, i. 225), Skerret’s report to Graham and the Regency (printed in Arteche, ix. pp. 544-5), and Contreras’s own narrative of the siege. This version, as it will be seen, differs from that of Napier, who is much harder on Skerret than he deserves—though the colonel was an unlucky officer and distrusted by his subordinates (see e. g. Sir Harry Smith’s autobiography, i. pp. 118-19).