On the morning of October 24, Soldiers and villagers picked through the still-smoking ruin of the baggage-train; seeking, it seemed to Sydney, less unspoiled booty than a shield from the frigid dawn. Shattered window-panes, a dead horse stripped of saddle and harness at the junction of Banbury Street and Warwick Road. The door of St Peter’s pocked with bullets; a boy there playing with a broken sword pointed him toward the Cat and String. The good and clean now a makeshift hospital: men groaning, weeping, praying, or (the lucky ones) unconscious on the porch, the common rooms, pale exhausted surgeons attending. The sober and industrious innkeeper, eating bacon and cider tabled on a barrel, handed over a pack of letters. “Latest on top,” he advised helpfully. SIR, it read. WITH THE TROOP OF CAPT CROMWELL, TO THE WEST.