[497] Ibid., 14,504.
[498] Napoleon to Joseph Napoleon, from Aranda, Nov. 27 (Nap. Corresp., 14, 518).
[499] Jourdan’s Mémoires, p. 92.
[500] Ney’s march and its difficulties can be studied in the Mémoires of Roca, then a captain in the 2nd Hussars, who shared this march with the 6th Corps.
[501] Only 1,500 of them, with Roca himself, followed Castaños.
[502] Mr. Frere to General Moore (from Aranjuez, Nov. 25); compare the letter of Martin de Garay (secretary of the Junta) to Mr. Frere, dated Nov. 24: ‘If the English troops form a junction with the Army of the Left, we compose a formidable body of 70,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry, a force with which we shall be certain of our blow, which we never could be by any different conduct.’
[503] Morla used many arguments to induce Hope to direct his men on Madrid, when the English general rode in from Talavera to discuss the situation with the Spanish authorities. Hope, of course, pleaded the duty of obedience to his chief.
[504] Belvedere’s dispatch to the Junta (Madrid Gazette of Nov. 15).
[505] Proclamation of the Supreme Junta, published in the Madrid Gazette of Nov. 15, 1808.
[506] Arteche says that ‘all the intact troops,’ i.e. the whole 3rd Estremaduran division, fell back on the Somosierra. But this is incorrect, for a dispatch of General Trias (Madrid Gazette of November 22) shows that he only took two or three battalions to the pass, and even some of these must afterwards have gone onto Segovia,for only one Estremaduran corps (the Badajoz Regiment) is found in the list of San Juan’s little army (Arteche, iii. 496).