"I was in this luxurious state--for dry quarters, and a sound sleep after a hearty meal, are great luxuries to the campaigner--when I was shaken by the shoulder, and I heard the devilish voice of our sergeant-major saying--
"'I beg your pardon, Captain ----; the first officer for duty is required to take convalescents to the rear They march an hour before daylight, and the adjutant sent me to warn you, sir, and say, the piper will blow the rouse in twenty minutes.'
"He retired, having delivered his orders; and then, as a pleasant sequel to them, I heard the rain--the heavy rain of Castile, where every drop is the size of a walnut--pattering on the long range of palace windows which faced the east. No man ever left a warm down bed more unwillingly than did I the hard tiled floor of the sala. I rolled up my cloak and blanket, slung them with my haversack and canteen, and then groped about for a small portmanteau which contained all my goods and gear; and, without disturbing my two comrades to bid them 'good-bye'--for, poor fellows! after so long a march as that of yesterday, to have done so would have been positive inhumanity--with half-closed eyes, I hurried along, stumbling over the sleeping soldiers, muskets, knapsacks, and broken furniture with which the vast halls and suites of chambers were encumbered. After losing myself for a time in that famous apartment of mirrors, where Godoy and the Queen were wont to perform fandangos, I reached the bridge of Toledo, as it is named from the road which crosses it; and there I found the convalescents assembling, in the dark of a cold and rainy morning, for daylight was yet an hour distant, and I heard the heavy drops battering the tarred canvas covers of the wretched caissons, wherein the sick and wounded lay. I heard the rain also lashing on the parapets of the bridge, and raising bubbles on the rapid stream which swept below its arches.
"There were not less than thirty waggons or bullock-cars filled by officers alone, many of them sick, or suffering from diseases produced by hardship and starvation; others from wounds, and the amputation of legs and arms, by the stupid apothecaries' boys, who composed almost wholly our medical staff in the Peninsula. In rags and misery, almost shirtless and shoeless, they lay closely packed in the caissons among a little straw; and one--the weakest and most reduced--was the famous Irish assistant-surgeon, Maurice Quill, of the 31st Regiment. I had one officer of the 1st Dragoon Guards, who, being mad as a March hare, had an entire waggon to himself, and I heard him bellowing like a wild bull, above the rushing rain and the howling wind as I approached this mournful assemblage on the old bridge of Toledo.