[299] For all this see Wimpffen’s reports printed in the Appendix to Suchet’s Mémoires, i. 359.
[300] His name was really Orsatelli, but he always appears in the reports as Eugenio.
[301] Vacani says only 266 (v. 26), including 3 officers killed and 13 wounded, but Martinien’s lists show 3 officers killed and 24 wounded; it is impossible that 27 officers should be hit and only 239 men—the proportion of 1 to 9 is incredible, and the loss must have been more like 600. Schepeler and the Spaniards put it at 1,200, which is too high.
[302] See vol. iii. p. 24.
[303] See below, [sect. xxviii. chap. i].
[304] Suchet, Mémoires, i. 266.
[305] The eleven battalions of Girard’s division, and from Gazan’s the 100th of the Line, and a battalion of the 21st Léger put in garrison at Badajoz.
[306] 26th Dragoons, 2nd and 10th Hussars, 21st Chasseurs à cheval, 4th Chasseurs Espagnols. Only the 10th Hussars and the 21st Chasseurs belonged to the 5th Corps.
[307] Nothing could be done in Estremadura without the 2nd Division, and D’Urban’s diary shows that the orders for the 2nd Division to march into the Alemtejo were only given on the 12th. Beresford’s chief of the staff notes on that day, ‘Orders to General Stewart [commanding 2nd Division] to fix his head quarters at Tramagal, to move the 13th to Crato or Carragueira [both in the Alemtejo south from Abrantes], and to let the troops remain as at present—unless it should become necessary to concentrate for the protection of the Bridge of Tancos.’ This shows that Wellington’s statement to Lord Liverpool on March 14th (Dispatches, vii. 360) that ‘troops had marched from Thomar on the 9th, and that part of Sir William Beresford’s division, which had not passed the Tagus, was put in motion, and that their head had arrived within three marches of Elvas,’ can apply at most to Hamilton’s Portuguese.
[308] Wellington to Lord Liverpool, March 14. Dispatches, vii. 360-1.