[86] So Colonel Béchaud’s narrative, quoted above, and most valuable for all this retreat.
[87] These figures look very large—and exceed Napier’s estimate of 5,000 sabres. But I can only give the strength of the French official returns, viz. Curto’s division 2,163, Boyer’s division 1,373, Merlin’s brigade 746, Laferrière’s brigade 1,662; total 5,944. All these units were engaged that day, as the French narrative shows, except that 4 only of the 6 squadrons of gendarmerie in Laferrière’s brigade were at the front.
[88] Owing to losses at Garcia Hernandez and Majadahonda the Germans were only 4 squadrons, under 450 effective sabres. The Light Dragoons of Anson, all three regiments down to 2-squadron strength, made up about 800.
[89] See vol. iv. pp. 565-9.
[90] Who was not himself any longer at their head, having been killed in a private quarrel some weeks before. His men were this day under his lieutenant Puente (Schepeler, p. 680).
[91] To Caffarelli’s high disgust: see his dispatch to Clarke of October 30, where he calls Boyer’s action a ‘fatalité que l’on ne peut conçevoir.’
[92] As Lumley did at Usagre against L’Allemand, see vol. iv. p. 412.
[93] Anson’s brigade fought, it is said, with only 600 sabres out of its original 800, owing to heavy losses in the morning, and to the dropping behind of many men on exhausted horses, who did not get up in time to form for the charge. Bock’s brigade was intact, but only 400 strong. Of the French brigade 1,600 strong on October 15 by its ‘morning state’ two squadrons out of the six of gendarmes were not present, so that the total was probably 1,250 or so engaged.
[94] Most of this detail is from the admirable account of von Hodenberg, aide-de-camp to Bock, whose letter I printed in Blackwood for 1913. There is a good narrative also in Martin’s Gendarmerie d’Espagne, pp. 317-19.
[95] In a conversation with Foy (see life of the latter, by Girod de l’Ain, p. 141) when he said that all the cavalry generals of the Army of Portugal except Montbrun, Fournier, and Lamotte were ‘mauvais ou médiocres’—these others being Curto, Boyer, Cavrois, Lorcet, and Carrié.