ABSTRACT
It was six o’clock in the evening of December 18, 1811. Dusk was fast obscuring the dilapidated white-walled houses with the dark rectangular sill-less windows and red-tiled roofs, which enclosed the little village square. A solitary rider jogged across it avoiding the piles of stones and dung, and threw the reins of his horse to a waiting groom. A sentry, wearing a long grey great-coat and a black shako on which the brass regimental badge shone dully, snapped his musket to the ‘present’; the rider dismounted and disappeared into a house a little more substantial than its neighbours. Wellington, having taken his customary exercise, was returning to his unpretentious headquarters at the village of Freneida some twenty miles from the French-held stronghold of Ciudad Rodrigo. As he strode into the dark cheerless rooms, poorly warmed by charcoal stoves and so badly lit that even at midday his secretaries had to use candles, the Peer, as he was called by his staff, had much to occupy his mind.
