[478] Who took over Lumley’s brigade when the latter was promoted to command the cavalry that morning.
[479] The remainder of Murillo’s division of 3,000 men, which formed the infantry of the 5th Army, was at Merida, save one battalion in garrison at Olivenza.
[480] In his dispatch to Berthier, written before leaving Seville, he spoke confidently of cutting in ahead of Blake, and surmised that the latter would find himself in a very compromising position, when he arrived in southern Estremadura, on learning that Beresford had already been driven across the Guadiana. On the 15th spies brought him the statement that Blake was timed to join Beresford only on the 17th. His battle-dispatch distinctly says that his first news of the junction having already taken place was got from prisoners during the course of the action.
[481] The battery was that of Captain Arriaga.
[482] The difference in strength was caused by the fact that two brigades had contributed two, and one other brigade one, battalion each to the garrison of Badajoz.
[483] Those at the War Ministry, not the Archives Nationales.
[484] Beresford suggests that Colborne asked Stewart to allow him to put the right wing of the Buffs into square or column, so as to protect the flank of the brigade, but that Stewart refused. Colborne’s short letter on the battle does not say so; but as he was on very friendly terms with Stewart, he may have refrained from writing the fact. He only says that the order of attack adopted was not his, and that he had no responsibility for it. See Beresford’s Further Strictures on Napier, vol. iii. p. 159.
[485] I published Major Brooke’s diary in Blackwood for 1908, with an account of his almost miraculous subsequent escape from Seville, under the title of ‘A Prisoner of Albuera.’
[486] See History of the 66th Regiment in Cannon’s Series.
[487] Napier is quite wrong in saying that this small diversion was successful, iii. 167. The prisoners were Captains Phillips and Spedding.