A distressing accident took place during this final strife between the hostile batteries: a large area of dry grass on the lower slopes of the Cerro de Medellin took fire, from smouldering wadding fanned by the wind. Many of the severely wounded of both sides were scorched, and some burnt to death, by the short but devouring conflagration that ran along the hillside[682].
By dusk the whole of the 4th Corps was rolling to the rear, and the last rays of daylight showed Wellesley the welcome view of a general retreat opposite his right and centre. Victor clung obstinately to the Cerro de Cascajal till far into the hours of darkness. But at last the cold fit supervened, his spirits sank, and he withdrew at 3 A.M. full of resentment, and well stocked with grievances for the acrimonious correspondence with Joseph and Jourdan in which he indulged for the next six weeks.
There can be little doubt that Jourdan was right in refusing to fall in with the younger marshal’s plans for a fourth assault on the British. Wellesley was well settled into his fighting-ground: at the southern end of his line Campbell was perfectly safe at the Pajar de Vergara redoubt. He had lost no more than 236 men, so that his whole division was practically intact. Hill’s brigades on the Cerro were also in perfectly good order—they had not been attacked since the morning, and would have been quite competent to defend themselves at five o’clock in the afternoon. The cannonade which they had been enduring had done some harm, but there were still 3,000 men in line, to hold a most formidable position. The only point of the British front on which the French could have hoped to make any impression was the centre. Here the Guards and Cameron’s brigade had suffered heavily, and the four battalions of the German Legion even worse—they had lost a full fifty per cent. of their numbers. But Mackenzie’s division was now in line with Sherbrooke’s, its first brigade supporting the Guards, its second (Donkin’s) linked to the Germans. Considering the way in which the British centre had dealt with the 15,000 bayonets of Sebastiani and Lapisse during the main engagement, the French critics who hold that they would have given way before the 5,000 men of Dessolles and the Royal Guard, even when backed by the rallied divisions, show a very optimistic spirit. Moreover when the battle had waxed hot in this quarter, the French would have had no certainty that Campbell and the Spaniards might not have fallen upon their flank. For Leval’s much depleted division was no longer in front of the British right—it had been withdrawn behind Sebastiani[683], and there was nothing to prevent the reserve-brigade of the 4th division from going to the aid of Sherbrooke’s men. The chances of war are incalculable, but there seems no reason to believe that Victor’s judgement as to the probability of success was any better at five o’clock in the afternoon than it had been at five o’clock in the morning. Jourdan was the wiser man.
Thus ended the battle of Talavera, in which 16,000 British supported and repulsed the attack of 26,000 French infantry—omitting from the total of the assailants the division of Villatte, which was only slightly engaged. The Cerro de Medellin was strong ground, but not so strong as to counterbalance a superiority of 10,000 men. The real fighting power of Wellesley’s foot-soldiery was shown in the lower parts of the field, where Sherbrooke’s and Mackenzie’s 8,000 bayonets achieved their marvellous success over the 15,000 men of Lapisse and Sebastiani. Doomed to apparent ruin by their own rash valour in pursuing the enemy across the Portiña, they yet recovered their line, re-established the battle, and finally won an almost incredible victory. The ‘First Division’ of the Peninsular army,—the Guards and the German Legion who fought side by side throughout the whole war,—had many proud days between 1809 and 1814, but surely Talavera was the most honourable of them all. Yet probably Mackenzie’s brigade and Donnellan’s 48th must claim an even higher merit—it was their prompt and steady help which gave their comrades time to re-form, and warded off the possibility of disaster at the critical moment.
The Spaniards had little to do upon July 28, but what little they had to do was well done. The charge of the cavalry regiment Rey was well timed and gallantly delivered. The few battalions engaged near the Pajar de Vergara and in Bassecourt’s division behaved steadily. The artillery sent to aid the British was manfully worked and did good service. But if only the Spanish army had been able to manœuvre, what a difference there must have been in the battle! When Leval, Sebastiani, and Lapisse fell back in disorder at 4 P.M., what would have been the fate of the French if Cuesta could have led out 25,000 men upon their flank and rear? He did not attempt to do so, and probably he was right. Yet it was hard for a British army to have to fight in line with allies who were perfectly useless for any large offensive movement.
The losses of Talavera, as we have already shown, were tremendous on both sides. Adding together the casualties of the twenty-seventh and the twenty-eighth, the British lost 5,365 men, 801 killed, 3915 wounded, and 649 missing. Of the last-named 108 belonged to the unfortunate 23rd Dragoons, and nearly 300 to the German Legion. Two generals, Mackenzie and Langwerth, had been killed, and three colonels, Ross of the Coldstream Guards, Donnellan of the 48th, and Gordon of the 83rd.
The French losses were decidedly heavier, though the percentage in the regiments was in most cases far lower than that in the victorious British force. The total was 7,268, of whom 761 were killed, 6,301 wounded, and 206 missing[684]. General Lapisse and von Porbeck of the Baden regiment, one of Leval’s brigadiers, were the only officers of distinction slain. But the number of field-officers wounded was enormous—in Sebastiani’s division all the colonels, and seven out of twelve of the battalion commanders were disabled.
Cuesta never issued any proper return of his casualties. He stated in one of his dispatches that they amounted to 1,201 men. This figure cannot possibly represent killed and wounded alone. Only one cavalry regiment, five or six battalions, and three batteries were engaged, none of them heavily. The British troops which fought in their neighbourhood had very modest losses, which made it incredible that the comrades in line with them should have suffered to the extent of more than 400 or 500 men. The balance must represent the missing from the stampede of Portago’s division upon the night of the twenty-seventh. Major-General Manglano, who commanded one of the divisions near the Pajar de Vergara, and de Lastra, the gallant colonel of the regimiento del Rey, were wounded.
The only trophies taken on either side were the seventeen guns of Leval’s division captured by Campbell and the Spanish cavalry.
N.B.—I have used of British sources mainly Lord Londonderry, Lord Munster, Leslie and Leith-Hay of the 29th, Stothert of the Guards, Cooper of the 2/7th, Hawker of the 14th Light Dragoons, and letters of Elley and Ponsonby of the 23rd Light Dragoons. Of French sources I have found Jourdan’s Mémoires, Victor’s dispatches and controversial letters with King Joseph, Sémélé’s journal of the 1st Corps, and Desprez’s narrative the most useful. From Colonel Whinyates I have received an unpublished map, drawn on the spot by Unger of the K.G.L., which fixes all the artillery position with admirable accuracy.