The following incident occurred at the Campo Mayor affair, on the 25th of March, 1811. "A French captain of dragoons demanded permission, under a flag of truce, to search among the dead for his colonel. His regiment was a fine one, with bright brass helmets and black horsehair. It was truly a bloody scene, being almost all sabre wounds. It was long before he could find the French colonel, for he was lying on his face, his naked body weltering in blood; and as soon as he was turned up, the officer knew him: he gave a sort of scream and sprang off his horse, dashed his helmet on the ground, knelt by the body, took the bloody hand and kissed it many times in an agony of grief: it was an affecting and awful scene. There were about six hundred naked dead bodies lying on the ground at one view. The French colonel was killed by a corporal of the Thirteenth. This corporal had killed one of his men, and he was so enraged, that he sallied out himself and attacked the corporal, who was well mounted and a good swordsman, as was the colonel himself. Both defended for some time; the corporal cut him twice across the face; his helmet came off at the second, when the corporal slew him by a cut which nearly cleft his skull asunder, cutting in as deep as the nose through the brain."
Private Stevenson, of Ligonier's Horse, having had his horse shot under him shortly after the commencement of the battle of Fontenoy, on the 11th May, 1745, did not rejoin his regiment until the evening of the following day. A court-martial was demanded by the man, before which he produced Lieutenant Izard, of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, who deposed that the prisoner acquainted him with the death of his horse, and requested permission to carry a firelock in the grenadier company under him. His request was granted; he behaved throughout the day with uncommon intrepidity, and was one of the nine grenadiers which he brought out of action. He was then promoted to a lieutenancy in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers.
I have seen majestic nature in grandeur displayed, With the hills and the valleys which the ocean hath made; I've seen the eagle and vulture with pinions extended, And battles so well fought that no hero could mend it.