It was soon seen that Victor had selected very favourable fighting-ground: indeed he had been staying at Talavera long enough to enable him to get a perfect knowledge of the military features of the neighbourhood. The 1st Corps was drawn up on a range of heights, about 800 yards behind the Alberche, with its left resting on the impassable Tagus, and its right on a wooded hill, behind which the smaller river makes a sharp turn to the east, so as to cover that flank. The position was formidable, but rather too long for the 22,000 men who formed the French army. Having learnt from the people of Talavera that the enemy had received no reinforcements up to that morning, from Madrid or any other quarter, Wellesley was anxious to close with them at once. The afternoon was too far spent for any attempt to force the passage on the twenty-second, but on the next day (July 23) the British general hoped to fight. The Alberche was crossed by a wooden bridge which the enemy had not destroyed, and was fordable in many places: there seemed to be no reason why the lines behind it might not be forced by a resolute attack delivered with numbers which were as two to one to those of the French.
Accordingly Wellesley left the 3rd division and Anson’s light horse in front of the right wing of Victor’s position, and encamped the rest of his army some miles to the rear, in the plain between Talavera and the Alberche. In the same way Albuquerque and Zayas halted for the night opposite the bridge on the French left, while the main body of the Spaniards occupied the town in their rear. In the evening hours Wellesley endeavoured to urge upon Cuesta the necessity for delivering an attack at dawn: he undertook to force the northern fords and to turn the enemy’s right, if his colleague would attack the southern fords and the bridge. The Captain-General ‘received the suggestion with dry civility,’ and asked for time to think it over. After a conference with his subordinates, he at last sent word at midnight that he would accept the proposed plan of operations.
At 3 o’clock therefore on the morning of the twenty-third, Wellesley brought down Sherbrooke’s and Mackenzie’s divisions to the ground opposite the fords, and waited for the arrival of the Spanish columns on his right. They did not appear, and after long waiting the British general rode to seek his colleague. He found him opposite the bridge of the Alberche, ‘seated on the cushions taken out of his carriage, for he had driven to the outposts in a coach drawn by nine mules, the picture of mental and physical inability.’ The old man murmured that the enemy’s position had not been sufficiently reconnoitred, that it would take time to get his army drawn out opposite the points which it was to attack, that he was not sure of the fords, that the bridge over which his right-hand column would have to advance looked too weak to bear artillery, and many other things to the same effect—finally urging that the forcing of the Alberche must be put off to the next day. As he had not got his troops into battle order, it was clear that the morning would be wasted, but Wellesley tried to bargain for an attack in the afternoon. The Captain-General asked for more time, and would listen to no arguments in favour of fighting on that day. After a heated discussion Wellesley had to yield: he could not venture to assail the French with his own army alone, and without any assistance from the Spaniards. Accordingly it was agreed that the advance should not be made till the dawn of the twenty-fourth.
In the afternoon the pickets sent back information that Victor seemed to be on the move, and that his line was growing thin. Cuesta was then persuaded to go forward to the outposts; he was hoisted on to his horse by two grenadiers, while an aide-de-camp stood on the other side to conduct his right leg over the croup and place it in the stirrup. Then, hunched up on his saddle, he rode down to the river, observed that the greater part of the enemy were still in position, and refused to attack till next morning.
At dawn, therefore, on the twenty-fourth the allied army moved forward to the Alberche in three columns, and found, as might have been expected, that the French had disappeared. On seeing the masses of redcoats opposite his right upon the previous day, Victor had realized at last that he had before him the whole British army. He had sent his train to the rear in the afternoon, and drawn off his entire force after dusk. By dawn he was more than ten miles away, on the road to Santa Ollala and Madrid. It was useless to pursue him with any hope of forcing him to a battle. The chance of crushing him before he should receive any further reinforcements had disappeared. It is not at all to his credit as a general that he had held his ground so long; if he had been attacked on the twenty-third, as Wellesley had desired, he must certainly have suffered a disaster. He had but 22,000 men; and it is clear that, while the Spaniards were attacking his left and centre, he could not have set aside men enough to hold back the assault of the solid mass of 20,000 British troops upon his right. He should have vanished on the twenty-second, the moment that Latour-Maubourg reported that Wellesley’s army was in the field. By staying for another day on the Alberche he risked the direst disaster.
The British general would have been more than human if he had not manifested his anger and disgust at the way in which his colleague had flinched from the agreement to attack, and sacrificed the certainty of victory. He showed his resentment by acting up to the terms of his letter written from Plasencia five days before, i.e. by announcing to Cuesta that, having carried out his pledge to drive the French from behind the Alberche, he should now refuse to move forward, unless he were furnished with transport sufficient to make it certain that the army could reach Madrid without any privations. He was able to state with perfect truth that he had already been forced to place his troops on half-rations that very morning: to the 10,000 men of Sherbrooke’s and Mackenzie’s divisions and of Anson’s light cavalry, he had only been able to issue 5,000 rations of bread[616]. Nothing, of course, could be found at Talavera, where the French had been quartered for many days. Victor had only been maintaining his troops by the aid of biscuit sent down from Madrid, and by seizing and threshing for himself the small amount of corn which had been sown in the neighbourhood that spring. Wellesley was wrong in supposing that the 1st Corps had been supporting itself with ease from the country-side[617]. He was equally at fault when he asserted that the ‘Spanish army has plenty to eat.’ Cuesta was at this moment complaining to the Junta that he was short of provisions, and that the food which he had brought forward from the Guadiana was almost exhausted. Meanwhile every exertion was being made to collect flour and transport from the rear: Wellesley wrote to O’Donoju that he had at last hopes of securing some wagons from the Plasencia district within three days, and that ‘in the meantime he might get something to eat.’ He had some days before sent orders back even so far as Abrantes, to order up 200 Portuguese carts which had been collected there, and the Central Junta had informed him that a train for his use had already started from Andalusia. But ‘there was no very early prospect of relieving the present distress[618].’
Cuesta was, as might have been expected, as angry with Wellesley for refusing to move forward from Talavera, as Wellesley was with Cuesta for missing the great opportunity of July 23. When informed that the British army was not about to advance any further, he announced that he for his part should go on, that Victor was in full flight, and that he would pursue him to Madrid. ‘In that case’ dryly observed Wellesley, ‘Cuesta will get himself into a scrape; but any movement by me to his assistance is quite out of the question. If the enemy discover that we are not with him, he will be beaten, or must return. The enemy will make this discovery to-day, if he should risk any attempt upon their rearguard at Santa Ollala[619].’ In reply to the Captain-General’s declaration that he should press Victor hard, his colleague only warned him that he would be wiser ‘to secure the course of the Tagus and open communication with Venegas, while the measures should be taken to supply the British army with means of transport[620].’ The Spaniard would not listen to any such advice, and hurried forward; though he had been for many weeks refusing to fight the 1st Corps when it lay in Estremadura, he was now determined to risk a second Medellin. Apparently he was obsessed by the idea that Victor was in full retreat for Madrid, and would not make a serious stand. Underlying his sudden energy there was also some idea that he would disconcert his masters of the Central Junta by recovering the capital: he had discovered, it would seem, that the Junta had sent secret orders to Venegas, directing him to take charge of the city on its reconquest, and giving him authority to nominate the civil and military officers for its administration. If the Army of Estremadura seized Madrid, while the Army of La Mancha was still lingering on the way thither, all these plans would be frustrated[621].
Accordingly Cuesta pushed on very boldly on the afternoon of the twenty-fourth, dividing his army into two columns, of which one marched on Santa Ollala by the high-road to the capital, while the other moved by Cevolla and Torrijos on the side-road to Toledo. He was uncertain whether Victor had retired by one or by both of these routes: if all his corps had taken the former path, the natural deduction was that he was thinking only of Madrid: if the Toledo road had also been used, there was reason for concluding that the Marshal must be intending to join Sebastiani and the 4th Corps, who might be looked for in that direction. Late in the day the Spanish general ascertained that the main body of Victor’s army had taken the latter route: he proceeded to follow it, placing his head quarters that night at Torrijos, only fifteen miles from Toledo. Next morning he learnt to his surprise and dismay that he had in front of him not only the 1st Corps, but also Sebastiani and the King’s reserves from Madrid: for just at this moment the whole French force in New Castile had been successfully concentrated, and nearly 50,000 men were gathered in front of the 33,000 troops of the Army of Estremadura. Venegas’s diversion had utterly failed to draw off the 4th Corps to the East; the King had come down in haste from Madrid, and thus the whole plan of campaign which the allied generals had drawn up had been foiled—partly by the sloth of Venegas, partly by Cuesta’s inexplicable and perverse refusal to fight on July 23 upon the line of the Alberche.