Note 488 — SECTION XXVI: CHAPTER V

The writer of the Strictures on Napier’s History, vol. iii, gives as an eye-witness the following anecdote: ‘As a Spanish soldier in the ranks close to the Marshal was looking to the rear, a Spanish-Irish officer in that service cried to him, “To-day is not the day to fly, when you are fighting as the comrades of the British.” The poor fellow replied, “No, señor, mas los Ingleses nos tiraron por atrás.”’ The Spanish never at any moment fired into the British, as Napier asserts. The mistake was remedied by Beresford’s aide-de-camp Arbuthnot, who rode, at great risk, along the front of the 29th, and stopped their fire.