CHAPTER XXIII.
IN CIUDAD RODRIGO.
Two days later our breaching batteries opened on the town.
It is not for me to describe this wonderful siege, the operations of which, though witnessing them in part, I did not understand in the least.

I have read more than one book about it since, and could draw you a map blindfold and tell you where the counter-batteries stood, and where the lunette which Colborne carried, and how far behind it lay the Convent of San Francisco; where the parallels ran, where the French brought down a howitzer, and where by a sortie they came near to cutting up a division.

I could trace you the _fausse braye_ and the main walls, and put my finger on the angle where our guns pierced the greater breach, and carry it across to the tower where, by the lesser breach, our own storming-party of the Light Division climbed into the town.

During the next five days I saw a many things shattered to lay the foundations of a fame which still is proved the sounder the closer men examine it--I mean Lord Wellington's: and in the end I, Harry Revel, contributed my mite to it in a splintered ankle.

I understand now many things which were then a mere confused hurly-burly: and even now--having arrived at an age when men take stock of themselves and, casting up their accounts with life, cross out their vanities--I am proud to remember that along with the great Craufurd, Mackinnon, Vandeleur, Colborne our Colonel, and Napier, I took my unconsidered hurt.