Thirteen hundred dead and dying are a grim sight upon a wide-spread battle-field, but when this number is heaped upon a confined space, where from a single high rock the whole litter of broken and shattered bodies can be seen, and the groans of the stricken rise in one long droning chorus to the ear, then it is an iron mind indeed which can resist such evidence of disaster.

In a harder age Wellington was able to survey four thousand bodies piled in the narrow compass of the breach of Badajos, but his resolution was sustained by the knowledge that the military end for which they fell had been accomplished.

Had his task been unfinished it is doubtful whether even his steadfast soul would not have flinched from its completion.

Thorneycroft saw the frightful havoc of one day, and he shrank from the thought of such another.

'Better six battalions safely down the hill than a mop up in the morning,' said he, and he gave the word to retire.