The Phantom Regiment
by James Grant
Jack Slingsby stigmatised this under the denomination of "being spooney;" but as I have a proper abhorrence of all that slang phraseology which is peculiar to the university, the barrack, the clubhouse, and the turf, I believe I shall quote honest Jack no more, but proceed in my own fashion.
She was the only daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Don Ignacio de Lucena, a Knight of San Ferdinando, an officer of Lancers in the service of the Queen of Spain, in one of whose battles he was taken prisoner by Cabrera, and shot in cold blood with fifty of his soldiers: for this ferocious Carlist behaved with such barbarity to the Constitutional Army that one of its officers, who had been a prisoner, assured me that at Valencia he and his comrades were subjected to such cruelty by their captors, that after a thousand sufferings, on being denied food, they were driven to the dreadful necessity of devouring the body of a fellow captive.