Aloha Anthony!

To answer your questions in order:

1. There is nothing in Simmons.

2. I agree with you that they were going along the main route from Portugal to Spain. . . that is part of the mystery. Vale de Mula is in Portugal and I would assume that any priests there would be Portuguese. Why would they be transporting Portuguese priests to prisons in Spain?

3. I think that there is a possibility that they might have been pro-French priests in the area, however I have not seen a credible source that supports this theory. Mark Urban does raise the issue of the priest at Barba del Puerco informing on the Rifles there. However I have only been able to find two sources that tells this story. I have problems with both of them:

a. Mark's source is John Kincaid, who was not in Spain at the time it happened. So at the best John Kincaid's account is hearsay.

b. The second source is from John Molloy, who was a lieutenant in the 1st Battalion 95th Rifles and was with the battalion in Spain when the incident happen. Only four Rifles Companies were at Barba del Puerco at the time. Unfortunately there is no evidence that he was or was not in any of those companies. I have the pay records from the National Archives for the 1st Battalion but they do not say which company the officers were in. The Company Muster Records have seem to disappear. John Molloy's account appeared in the July - December 1897 issue of the Cornhill Magazine. The article is a collection of anecdotes told by John Molloy to General Edmund du Cane, when both were living in Australia. Unfortunately the article is written in a combination of 1st and 2nd person voice so it can be very confusing trying to determine whether it is John or Edmund is telling the story. Adding to the confusion is the fact that the article was written 30 years after John's death. There is no indication whether Edmund wrote the article based on his own memories or on notes he took at the time. It might be accurate or it might be based on John Kincaid's book. I don't know.

Bob