Chapter LXXXVI: Section 1: “March 1, 1811

“I have been employed in constructing batteries, opposite the mouth of the Zezere, for twenty-five guns! though we have only one brigade of nine pounders to arm them.

“Thank God, for my own credit, I protested against these batteries from the first, in my reports which were sent to lord Wellington, and now I verily believe the marshal himself is ashamed of their construction. Punhete, you know, is situated precisely at the confluence of the Zezere with the Tagus, the enemy’s bridge is about half a mile from the mouth of the river, and one mile, by measurement, from the nearest of our heights, which we have crowned with an eight-gun battery.”