[535] Certainly on reading Suchet’s report one would not be inclined to think that the whole matter was such a disgraceful rout as Von Brandt (i. 74-5) describes in the above paragraphs.
[536] Mémoires, p. 36.
[537] Morlot’s division had been handed over to Habert, who resigned his brigade of Laval’s division to the Polish colonel Chlopicki.
[539] See the letter to Colonel Bourke, Wellington Dispatches, iv. 390-400.
[540] Napier (ii. 149) calls this alternative plan of campaign ‘a movement in conjunction with Beresford, del Parque, and Romana by Salamanca.’ This is a most inappropriate description of it: about June 10, when operations might have commenced, Del Parque’s army did not yet exist. There were only three or four of Carlos d’España’s battalions at or near Rodrigo. La Romana, on the other hand, was at Orense facing Soult, and could not have reached Almeida or Rodrigo for weeks after the campaign would have begun.
[541] See the ‘Memorandum for Lieut.-Col. Bourke’ in Wellington Dispatches, iv. 372-3.
[542] Wellesley to Mackenzie, from San Tyrso, May 21.
[543] Compare the two dispatches of Victor to Jourdan of April 25 (acknowledging the receipt of Lapisse’s division) and of May 21.
[544] See King Joseph to Napoleon, of the dates April 22 and May 24, 1809.