liars of the world. Not content with doing nothing themselves, they seem
to delight in inventing lies to prevent our doing anything for them. Who
ever heard of an army marching, without artillery and cavalry, one way,
while these arms travelled by a different road entirely, and that not for
a march of twenty miles, but for a march of three hundred? One battery is
to go with us. But what will be the use of six guns against an enemy with
sixty? Every day the baggage is being cut down owing to these blackguard
Portuguese breaking their engagements to furnish waggons, and we shall
have to march pretty nearly as we stand, and to take with us nothing
beyond one change of clothes."

Loud exclamations of discontent ran round the table. It was bad enough
that in the midst of a campaign waggons should break down and baggage be
left behind, but that troops should start upon a campaign with scarcely
the necessaries of life had caused general anger in the army; and no order
would have been more willingly obeyed than one to march upon Lisbon, shoot
every public official, establish a state of siege, and rule by martial
law, seizing for the use of the army every draught animal, waggon, and
carriage that could be found in the city, or swept in from the country
round. The colonel had not exaggerated matters. The number of tents to be
taken were altogether insufficient for the regiment, even with the utmost
crowding possible. The officers' baggage had been cut down to twenty
pounds a head--an amount scarcely sufficient for a single change of
clothes and boots. Even the amount of ammunition to be taken would be
insufficient to refill the soldiers' pouches after the supply they carried
was exhausted.

The paucity of baggage would not have mattered so much had the march begun
at the commencement of summer, instead of just as winter was setting in.
In the former case, men could have slept in the open air, and a solitary