[642] All this can be studied in Nap. Corresp., 14,609, 14,611, 14,614. The march out towards the Escurial is fixed, by the Madrid Gazette of Dec. 23, as having begun late on the twenty-first.
[643] This error appears in Nap. Corresp., 14,614 [Dec. 22], ‘si les Anglais veulent tenir à Valladolid’; 14,616 [Dec. 23] says, ‘Les Anglais paraissent être à Valladolid, probablement avec une avant-garde.’ It is only on Dec. 27 that he writes to King Joseph that they had never been there at all, save with a flying party of 100 light cavalry.
[644] This is Napoleon’s own estimate (Nap. Corresp., 14,615). Marshal Jourdan, who was more or less in charge of the whole, as chief of the staff to King Joseph, says that there were in reality only 30,000 men in all (Mémoires Militaires, p. 130). Not only was Victor’s corps short of the division of Lapisse (which the Emperor had carried off), but Lefebvre’s was also incomplete, as two Dutch and one German battalions of Leval’s division were behind in Biscay, garrisoning Bilbao and other points. King Joseph’s Guards had also left some detachments behind, and were not up to full strength (Nap. Corresp., 14,615).
[645] Moore to Baird, from Salamanca, Dec. 6.
[646] The phrase will be found in De Pradt, p. 211.
[647] Nap. Corresp., 14,620 (Napoleon to King Joseph, Dec. 27).
[648] Oddly enough Joseph had anticipated his brother’s orders, by putting in the Madrid Gazette of that very day a notice that a British corps was in the most critical position, that its retreat was cut off, and that ‘London, so long insensible to the woes of Spain, will soon grieve over a disaster that is her own and not that of another.’
[649] Moore to La Romana, from Sahagun, night of Dec. 23-4.
[650] Moore to La Romana, from Sahagun, Dec. 24.
[651] There is a good account of this dangerous passage in Adam Neale’s Spanish Campaign of 1808.