Thanks Anthony, that's really useful. The National Archives has the full set of JSAHR so I'll look it up next time I'm there.

The whole episode has lots of little mysteries. The reference to Trafalgar seems improbable. The reference to Du Pont doesn't seem to fit very well either. I know some of there battalion left Salamanca on the 29 November and I had thought the last of them left on 5 December. But of course the other 5 companies never got to Salamanca having been sent back to Portugal by Hope. I can't find Sotrico on google maps. Sotico in Spain is 124 miles north of Salamanca! The info also said that Moore was at Salamanca and not getting ready to go anywhere, but the 5/60th were sent away with baggage precisely because he was getting ready to move and had left by the 19th.

Anyway, the vast majority of those that deserted were retaken so I'm going to look at the courts martial for the period next time I'm at the archives too.

I'll probably end up spending days on this and it will only be a couple of paragraphs in the book but that's the way it goes. I can't stop now I've started pulling at the threads.

Thanks again for the help.

Rob