[625] Compare Le Noble’s account of Soult’s proposals (pp. 312-3) with Jourdan’s Mémoires, and with the Vie Militaire du Général Foy, p. 83.
[626] For the controversy about the expected date of Soult’s arrival at Plasencia, see Joseph’s and Jourdan’s letter to Napoleon, in Ducasse’s Mémoires du Roi Joseph, and on the other side Le Noble’s Campagne de 1809.
[627] The whole consisted of:
| Infantry of the Guard | 1,800 |
| Chevaux-Légers of the Guard | 250 |
| Godinot’s Brigade of Dessolles’s Division | 3,350 |
| 27th Chasseurs (two squadrons) | 250 |
| Artillery (two batteries) | 200 |
| 5,850 |
[628] ‘The cavalry regiment of Villaviciosa, drawn up in an enclosure with but one exit, was penned in by the enemy and cut to pieces without a possibility of escape. A British officer of engineers, present with them, saved himself by his English horse taking at a leap the barrier which the Spanish horses were incapable of clearing.’ Lord Munster, p. 208.
[629] He had six regiments of Latour-Maubourg’s dragoons, 3,200 sabres, four regiments of Merlin’s Division, 1,007 sabres, two regiments of Beaumont’s (corps-cavalry of 1st Corps) 980—a total of over 5,000 men.
[630] Wellesley to O’Donoju, from Cazalegas, July 25.
[631] Lord Munster, p. 210.
[632] Several eye-witnesses declare that Lapisse’s division escaped notice owing to a curious chance. Before abandoning the further bank of the Alberche, Mackenzie’s troops had set fire to the huts which Victor’s corps had constructed on the Cazalegas heights, during their long stay in that position. The smoke from the burning was driven along the slopes and the river bottom by the wind, and screened one of the fords from the British observers in the woods; over this ford came Lapisse’s unsuspected advance.
[633] Unfortunately the French returns do not separate the losses of the twenty-seventh from those of the twenty-eighth of July. Only the 16th Léger can have suffered any appreciable damage.