Note 278 — Chapter XVI · IMPEDIMENTA: THE BAGGAGE—LADIES AT THE FRONT

One officer relates that he came upon his own mule-boy, aged ten or twelve, deliberately beating out the brains of a wounded Frenchman, at Salamanca, with a large stone. Another diarist speaks of making a wounded Frenchman comfortable while he went for a surgeon, and returning to find him stabbed and stripped. A third (F. Monro, R.A.) says, “I found myself among the dead and dying, to the shame of human nature be it said, both stripped, some half-naked, some wholly so, and this done principally by those infernal devils in mortal shape, the cruel, cowardly Portuguese followers, unfeeling ruffians. The Portuguese pillaged and plundered our own wounded officers before they were dead!”