his throat he cut open my shoulder, my horse, mortally hurt by a bayonet
thrust, fell, half rolling over me and crushing my leg.

As I lay on the ground, faint with the loss of blood and unable to rise,
some of our fellows rode over me, and being hit on the head by one of
their horses, I lost consciousness. When I came to myself the skirmish was
over, nearly the whole of the French rear-guard had been taken prisoners
or cut to pieces, and a surgeon was dressing my wounds. This done, I was
removed in an ambulance to Salamanca.

The historic old city, with its steep, narrow streets, numerous convents,
and famous university, had been well-nigh ruined by the French, who had
pulled down half the convents and nearly all the colleges, and used the
stones for the building of forts, which, a few weeks previously,
Wellington had bombarded with red-hot shot.

The hospitals being crowded with sick and wounded, I was billeted in the
house of a certain Señor Don Alberto Zamorra, which (probably owing to the
fact of its having been the quarters of a French colonel) had not taken
much harm, either during the French occupation of the town or the
subsequent siege of the forts.

Don Alberto gave me a hearty, albeit a dignified welcome, and being a
Spanish gentleman of the old school, he naturally placed his house, and
all that it contained, at my disposal. I did not, of course, take this
assurance literally, and had I not been on the right side, I should
doubtless have met with a very different reception. All the same, he made
a very agreeable host, and before I had been his guest many days we became
fast friends.