It is true that whilst the Emperor's troops made war on the maxim
that an army must support itself upon the country it traverses,
thereby achieving a greater mobility, since it was thus permitted
to travel comparatively light, the British law was that all things
requisitioned must be paid for. Wellington maintained this law in
spite of all difficulties at all times with an unrelaxing rigidity,
and punished with the utmost vigour those who offended against it.
Nevertheless breaches were continual; men broke out here and there,
often, be it said, under stress of circumstances for which the
Portuguese were themselves responsible; plunder and outrage took
place and provoked indiscriminating rancour with consequences at
times as terrible to stragglers from the British army of deliverance
as to those from the French army of oppressors. Then, too, there
was the Portuguese Militia Act recently enforced by Wellington -
acting through the Portuguese Government - deeply resented by the
peasantry upon whom it bore, and rendering them disposed to avenge
it upon such stray British soldiers as might fall into their hands.

Knowing all this, Sergeant Flanagan did not at all relish this night
excursion into the hill fastnesses, where at any moment, as it seemed
to him, they might miss their way. After all, they were but twelve
men all told, and he accounted it a stupid thing to attempt to take
a short cut across the hills for the purpose of overtaking an
encumbered troop that must of necessity be moving at a very much
slower pace. This was the way not to overtake but to outdistance.
Yet since it was not for him to remonstrate with the lieutenant, he
kept his peace and hoped anxiously for the best.

At the mean wine-shop of that hamlet Mr. Butler inquired his way by