Talavera de la Reyna lies upon low ground on the right bank of the Tagus, which here is comparatively wide and shallow, and is crossed by a{213} long and very crooked bridge. The town is not strictly fortified; but it is walled, and well screened by its orchards; and as the plain is here narrowed by outlying hummocks from the mountains, it forms an effective position for disputing the passage of the road.
All the main fighting in the battle took place upon the higher ground to the northward. The town itself, with its enclosures and orchards, was occupied by the Spaniards under their obstinate old Captain-General Cuesta. They had nearly come to grief two days before in retreating across the Alberche, but were now entrenched in a position too strong for assault; and Jourdan and Victor directed all their efforts against the left and centre where the English were drawn up. Here the ground is more open and more elevated, sloping up from the flats by the river till it culminates in the hill of Medellin. The position (as in most other battlefields) does not seem very formidable to a layman. But then any position that did would probably never be attacked.
The battle was one of the bloodiest in the Peninsula; for the British were heavily outnumbered, and their raw militia battalions lacked three years’ tempering of the Ironsides of Albuera{214} and Badajoz. But what they lacked in warcraft they redeemed in staunchness. For two days and a night they were fighting, and then their assailants sullenly withdrew. Yet, after all, Sir Arthur Wellesley had won merely a tactical victory. His strategic position was too perilous to permit him to garner the fruits. Soult’s Galician army corps, already reorganised after the debacle of the Douro, was threatening his rear from Plaséncia; and it was only by an adroit retreat across the Tagus at Arzobispo that he was able to elude the stroke.
One of the minor incidents of the battle was an extraordinary piece of marching. The Light Division, under General Craufurd, was far in the rear at the commencement of the fighting, and were eager to get up before the close. The task was too great, but the attempt was something Homeric. They covered sixty-two miles in twenty-six hours, all in full marching order: and lost but seventeen stragglers by the way! This was probably a record for the Peninsula; though Wellington himself thought that it might be paralleled in India; and some of Marmont’s marches previous to Salamanca were not far behind. What manner of men were they who could achieve such feats in July under a Spanish sun?{215}
CHAPTER XI
A RAID INTO ESTREMADURA
THE Estremadura road launches out boldly from the end of the Segóvia bridge at Madrid, and the fingerpost which points along it laconically observes that that way you will get to Badajos. But quite a lot of water will flow under the Segóvia bridge first, even though it is only the Manzanares which runs there.
Wherefore, to avoid over-watering this narrative, we will not begin it at Madrid, nor even at Talavera, but transport ourselves at one stride right away to the other end of the long line of snowy mountains which guards the northern side of the Estremadura road. Here the Sierra de Grédos ends in a forked tail like one of its own falcons, and between the forks a long, straight valley runs up into the centre of the range. The great snow-peaks sit along either side of that long, straight valley like a Parliament of Gods, with the shaggy{216} ilex woods wrapped around their knees; and at its mouth, on a slight eminence half encircled by the new-born waters of the Jerte, stands the ancient city of Plaséncia.
I were ungrateful not to retain a warm corner in my heart for pretty little Plaséncia, for I arrived there limping and dog-wrecked, and Plaséncia was kind to me. But he would be an unimpressionable mortal who could not love her for her beauty alone; and I am not sure that even I—such is man’s gratitude—would remember her as kindly had she been less fair. The crumbling walls, the solemn palaces, the quaint old streets and beautiful situation, make this little Hesperian township one of the most charming in Spain. Is she not rightly named “Pleasaunce”? Queenly Segóvia herself need not disdain so fair a cousin.