As soon as light served and communication between the castle and the town opened, I bent my way along the ramparts towards the main opening in the Trinidad bastion. The glorious dawn of day, contrasted with the horrible scenes which I had witnessed, filled the mind with joy. The sun rose in majesty and splendour, as usual in the blooming month of April, which in that climate is as our May. The country around was clothed in luxuriant verdure, refreshed by recent dew, which still clinging to each green leaf and blade in diamond drops reflected the verdant hue of the foliage upon which it hung till diamonds seemed emeralds. A thousand nameless flowers, displaying as many lovely colours, were on all the earth. Proudly and silently the Guadiana flowed, exhibiting its white surface to the majestically rising orb which gave to the ample and gently heaving breast of the noble stream the appearance of an undulating plain of burnished silver. On its fertile banks the forward harvest already promised abundance and contentment even to the most avaricious husbandman. The fruit trees opened their rich and perfumed blossoms; the burnished orange borrowing colour of the sun glowed in contrast with the more delicate gold of lemon; and everywhere grey olive trees spread ample boughs--but here, alas! they were not the emblems of peace. Every creeping bramble and humble shrub made a fair show that morning; birds sang in heaven; all sensitive and animated nature appeared gay and seemed with grateful acknowledgments to welcome the glorious father of light and heat. The lord of creation alone, “sensible and refined man,” turned his back on the celestial scene to gloat in the savage murders and degrading obscenity that wantoned in devoted Badajoz.
When I arrived at the great breach the inundation presented an awful contrast to the silvery Guadiana; it was fairly stained with gore, which through the vivid reflection of the brilliant sun, whose glowing heat already drew the watery vapours from its surface, gave it the appearance of a fiery lake of smoking blood, in which were seen the bodies of many a gallant British soldier. The ditches were strewn with killed and wounded; but the approach to the bottom of the main breach was fairly choked with dead. A row of _chevaux de frise_, armed with sword-blades, barred the entrance at the top of the breach and so firmly fixed that when the 4th and light Divisions marched through, the greatest exertion was required to make a sufficient opening for their admittance. Boards fastened with ropes to plugs driven into the ground within the ramparts were let down, and covered nearly the whole surface of the breach; these boards were so thickly studded with sharp pointed spikes that one could not introduce a hand between them; they did not stick out at right angles to the board, but were all slanting upwards. In rear of the _chevaux de frise_ the ramparts had deep cuts in all directions, like a tanyard, so that it required light to enable one to move safely through them, even were there no opposing enemy. From the number of muskets found close behind the breach, all the men who could possibly be brought together in so small a place must have had at least twenty firelocks each, no doubt kept continually loaded by persons in the rear. Two British soldiers only entered the main breach during the assault; I saw both their bodies. If any others entered they must have been thrown back over the walls, for certain it is that at dawn of the 7th no more than two British bodies were within the walls near the main breach. In the Santa Maria breach not one had entered. At the foot of this breach the same sickening sight appeared as at that of Trinidad: numberless dead strewed the place. On looking down these breaches I recognised many old friends, whose society I had enjoyed a few hours before, now lying stiff in death.