Our loss had been very heavy; 801 killed, 3913 wounded, 653 missing. The Spaniards had 1250 killed and wounded. Generals Mackenzie and Langworth fell. Two bullets passed through Sir Arthur’s clothes, and he received a severe contusion on the shoulder from a spent musket-ball. During the second action no attack was made upon the main body of Cuesta’s army; the position was too strong, and the French rightly judged, that if, by bringing their whole force to bear upon the English, they could defeat them, Cuesta’s discomfiture must necessarily follow. On this day, therefore, they were in the proportion of more than two to one to the troops whom they engaged. The British entered the field 18,300 effective men; they were opposed to not less than 48,000. The presence of the Spaniards was of vital importance, by the security which they afforded to the right of our army; and essential service was afforded by those who came into action on the second day, especially by Alburquerque and Bassecourt, and by two battalions under Brigadier-General Whittingham, in their service, who came forward to support the Guards; but the brunt of the battle was borne by the British, as the loss which they sustained evinces. From their loss that of the defeated enemy might fairly be computed, if the numbers left upon the field had not afforded surer ground. Both Spaniards and English state it at not less than 10,000 men; the number of their dead was so great, that Cuesta ordered out his troops by battalions to burn them.
♦Cuesta decimates some of his troops.♦
The Spaniards, where they were well commanded, behaved well; but melancholy proofs were given of the inefficient state of their armies. The whole of their commissariat took flight as soon as the action began, with all the people belonging to them; so that after the battle the allies found themselves in total want of food and resources. Three or four corps threw down their muskets without having once discharged them, and dispersed; some of them plundered the baggage. Cuesta was so indignant at this, that after the action he ordered the division to be decimated, and it was only after much entreaty from the British Commander that he consented to re-decimate those on whom the lot had fallen, and six officers and some thirty men were actually executed. Sir Arthur remarked upon this occasion, with equal humanity and wisdom, that fear of disgrace would affect the Spaniards more than fear of death, and that for this reason, among others, exertions ought to be made for clothing them in uniform. Marching to battle as they did, without any thing to distinguish them for soldiers, in the first panic they threw away their arms and accoutrements, and pretended to be peasants. Men dressed as soldiers could not thus at once put off the marks of their profession, and that being the case, they would feel that their safety depended upon keeping their arms and standing their ground; and when the whole army was uniformly clothed, it would be easy to deprive the soldier who should misbehave of a part of his uniform, or to fix upon him some mark of disgrace,—a mode of punishment, he said, the most effectual as well as the most humane. Cuesta had just experienced the good effect of such measures; the regiments whom he deprived of one of their pistols for misconduct at the battle of Medellin, behaved so well from that time, and exerted themselves so strenuously on all occasions to wipe off their disgrace, that, after the battle of Talavera, the pistol was restored to them.
♦State of Talavera.♦
The wounded of both armies were brought in promiscuously, and many of them laid in the streets and in the squares till shelter could be allotted for them: even for this inevitable necessity no order having been taken by the Spanish authorities. It is worthy of notice, that a greater proportion recovered of those who were left a night upon the field, than of such as were earlier housed, and this is explained by the effect of the free air in preventing fever. Needful accommodations for these poor creatures were not to be found in a city which the French had visited. They had destroyed the public buildings, overturned the altars, and opened the tombs. Furniture of every kind they had carried off to their camp, and what they had no other use for, they had consumed as fuel. Frenchmen like, they had a theatre in their camp. The soldiers’ huts were so remarkable for neatness and regularity, as to be an object of curiosity to the British officers; but it was remarked as one proof of the wanton destruction caused by the Intruder’s armies, that they were all thatched with unthreshed straw. It ought to be mentioned as a contrast to this, that when the British troops halted by day or night amid olive-groves, they were not allowed to cut the trees either for fuel or for shelter.
♦Movements of Sir R. Wilson.♦
The day after the action a light brigade, 3000 strong, and a troop of horse-artillery, under Brigadier-General Craufurd, arrived from Lisbon to reinforce the British army, which thus found itself nearly as strong as before the action. But a battle so well contested, and so gloriously won, was rendered of no avail, by the complicated misconduct of the Spanish government and of the Spanish general. The same want of provisions and of the means of transport, which had compelled Sir Arthur to halt at Talavera, prevented him from pursuing his victory. The Intruder, ignorant of this, trembled for Madrid, expecting every hour to hear that Venegas, Sir R. Wilson, and the combined forces were marching upon that city, where the people were looking out for their deliverers. Sir Robert had proceeded with his corps to Navalcarneiro, notwithstanding the immediate neighbourhood of the enemy’s army. The detachment reached the Guadarrama: he had established a communication with Madrid, Belliard was preparing to withdraw from the city into the Retiro, which had been fortified as a citadel, and Sir Robert had made arrangements for entering the metropolis on the night of that very day when he and his corps were recalled, because a general action was expected. Some insurrectionary movements had already appeared, which Belliard had been able to suppress; but it was certain that the moment an army came to the assistance of the citizens, he would no longer be able to keep them down. Joseph’s hope, therefore, was from an attack upon the rear of the allies, to be made by the collected forces of Soult, Ney, and Mortier, under command of the former.
♦Movements of Soult, Ney, and Mortier.♦
Soult, after his retreat from Galicia, occupied Zamora, Salamanca, and Leon, with the remains of his army, which he had found means to reequip. Ney’s corps was quartered at Astorga, Benevente, and Leon; Mortier’s at Medina del Campo, and Valladolid. Apprised of the movements of the English, Soult gave orders on the 20th for collecting the whole at Salamanca, and four days afterwards was instructed by Jourdan, in the Intruder’s name, to advance as speedily as possible upon the rear of the enemy by way of Plasencia. Sir Arthur, from the commencement of the campaign, was aware of the existence of this force in the north, and the manner in which it would attempt to act. His own army was so small, that it was not possible for him to spare detachments for securing the passes of the long mountain-ridge which the French ♦Cuesta neglects to secure the passes.♦ must cross. But Cuesta had sent the Marquess de la Reyna, with two battalions from his own army and two from Bejar, to occupy the Puerto de Baños, and given orders to the Duque del Parque to secure the Puerto de Perales, by detachments from Ciudad Rodrigo. The former point Sir Arthur considered safe; but, doubting the Duque’s power to spare a sufficient force for the latter, he directed Beresford, with the Portugueze troops, to defend this pass, as the greatest service which, in their then state of discipline, they were capable of performing.
♦Intelligence of Soult’s advance.♦