LIEUT.-GENERAL THOMAS DYNELEY, C.B., B.A. 5Al 
LETTER XVI. 
(To His Sister Dora). 
San Payo, November 28rd, 1812. 
_ Here we are all back again and I am happy to say I was never in 
better health and spirits in my life. 
To give you an idea of the miseries of our retreat would be impossible 
unless I had you here to talk it over. Suffice it to say that certainly 
nothing could have been worse conducted. We commenced our march 
on the 14th November and it never ceased raining until our arrival at 
Alamedilla on the 21st, therefore you may suppose the state the country 
was in for the poor men and horses. I am unacquainted with the 
number of each which we have lost, but it must be prodigiously great. 
You may easily imagine this when I tell you that the enemy were 
pushing us hard the whole way and that I saw some hundreds of men, 
women and children stuck in the mud, and unable to move from 
hunger and sickness. In a great many instances our poor wounded 
men had only the alternative either of being left behind and falling 
into the hands of the enemy, or of being dragged along by two men 
of their regiment. You may judge of my feelings on being obliged to 
refuse application after application to carry these unfortunate beings 
on our gun-carriages. Many of them, to excite compassion, would pull 
their clothes aside to shew their wounds, but we were obliged to turn 
a deaf ear to them or risk the loss of our guns by overloading the 
horses. I leave you.to,decide how great the danger of doing so was 
when I tell you that the horses were fed on the evening of the 16th, 
and after that, I declare upon my word, that the poor devils never had 
a single thing of any sort within their lips until the evening of the 
20th, save and except the harness they eat off each other’s backs, and 
the lids off the limber-boxes! One, indeed, I had compassion on and 
gave him a double handful of sand-stone, which I assure you (you 
need not laugh for it is a fact) he eat as eagerly as I ever saw an 
animal eat beans! You will be surprised no doubt to hear that in 
these four days we only lost four horses and two mules, which were the 
worst in the troop. 
On the 17th, between one and two o’clock, we came into action? and 
the second or third round of the enemy’s fire disabled Macdonald. 
Of this I knew nothing until a few minutes afterwards when, enquiring 
for him, I was told he had been carried very severely wounded to the rear. 
In the course of half-an-hour a man returned bringing with him the 
piece of shell about an inch and a half square, just as it was cut out of 
the wound, and begged to know if I wished to have it, which I 
declined, thinking it was more than probable I should have a bit to take 
care of for myself before the day was over. For we remained on the same 
spot from that time till dark with five guns playing from a hill on our 
right flank and four in our front ploughing the ground up in beautiful 
1 See Swabey Diary entry for November 21st, 1812. 
2 At San Muiios at the fordion the Yeltes river. 
