A414 LIEUT.-GENERAL THOMAS DYNELEY, 0.B., B.A. 
LETTER VI. 
(To tHE Same). 
Toro prL ALMENDRAL, April 6th, 1812. 
We arrived the day before yesterday at Santa Marta and the next 
day came an order for two guns to go back immediately, of which 
Macdonald! took the command, while I received orders to march to this 
place and arrived late last night. A report is current that the enemy 
is coming down very fast and will most certainly give us battle at 
Albuera which is only two leagues and a half from us. As I fancied 
old Dame Fortune, with whom I by no means think I have been out of 
favour through life, might let me have the command of the four guns, 
I set off this morning at daylight to look at the old ground and thought 
what you would have given for such a ride. I pressed into my service 
a young man of the 48th Regiment, who was in the action, and he 
explained the position of both armies to me. One or both sides must 
have been a good deal hurried, for in one part of the field there is a 
trench dug nearly two hundred yards long, into which all the dead have 
been thrown, but not a single shovel full of earth has been put over 
them and to this day® they are lying in that state, and the field covered 
with clothing, camp kettles, shot, shells, etc. 
Some of our troops are at this moment actually marching for the 
plains of Albuera and we are in expectation of our route every instant, 
but the French are at too great a distance to be down there these three 
or four days. Come when they will, don’t fear, we will give a good 
account of them, for the army is in good health and spirits and rages 
for the fight. Between ourselves, I am very sorry to say that a great 
number of our foreigners have deserted and given the enemy a vast 
deal of information, which they have already acted upon to our loss. 
Having read this letter, my dear John, | daresay you will say “ it is 
quite impossible to make out what this fellow means by his unconnected 
accounts.” Your observation will be a correct one enough, but from 
the disconnected way in which it is written you will in some degree be 
able to judge how we are knocked about from pillar to post. If you 
can make out the writing, it is as much as I can do myself, for I have 
generally written when I have come in after a day’s work, fagged to 
death, so you will, I am sure, make all excuses. 
I hear you have kindly interested yourself about the brevet for me. 
It is a hard case, is it not? A captain in the army of the same stand- 
ing would have got it. 
1 Captain Robert Macdonald, (Kane’s List, No. 858), commanding ‘ E’ troop R.H.A. 
2 The battle was fought the May previous. 
