Two days after the battle, intelligence was brought to Talavera that 12,000 rations had been ordered at Fuente Duenas for the 28th, and 24,000 at Los Santos on the same day, for a French army, which it was supposed was on its march to the Puerto de Baños. Cuesta upon this discovered some anxiety respecting that post, and proposed that Sir R. Wilson with his corps should be sent thither. This could not be assented to, for his corps was stationed in the mountains towards Escalona, still keeping up a communication with the people of Madrid, ... an advantage too important to be foregone. Of this Cuesta appeared sensible; yet he could not be prevailed upon to send a detachment from his own army; and Sir Arthur, considering that they had no other grounds for believing this was the point which was threatened than that the rations were ordered, which might be a feint, and hoping too that the troops already there might prove sufficient, and even that the news of his late victory might deter the French from proceeding, did not press the Spanish general further that day. Night brought with it the anxious feeling that a point had now become of prime importance, concerning which he could not be satisfied that proper means had been ♦July 31.♦ taken for its defence; and in the morning he again pressed Cuesta upon the subject, urging him to detach thither a division of infantry, with its guns, and a commanding officer on whom he could rely. “Certainly,” he declared, “he never would have advanced so far, if reason had not been given him to believe that pass was secure. The division would not be missed at Talavera; if it arrived in time it would perform a service of the greatest moment; and even if the enemy should have crossed the mountains before its arrival, it would then be in a situation to observe him.” But Cuesta was not to be persuaded. That day and the following elapsed; on the third came tidings that the French had entered Bejar; and then the Spanish general dispatched Bassecourt with a force which might have sufficed had it been sent in time.
♦Soult occupies Plasencia.♦
Mortier began his march from Salamanca on the 27th, Soult followed on the 30th, Ney two days afterwards, all taking the same route. The advance fell in with the Marquess de la Reyna’s out-posts at La Calzala, and pursued them to Bejar and Col de Baños. The two battalions on which Cuesta had relied before the appearance of danger, consisted of only 600 men, supplied with twenty rounds of ammunition! Even this was more than they employed; they attempted to blow up the bridge called Cuesper de Hombre, and failing in that, retired without firing a shot. ♦1809. August.♦ The battalions of Bejar dispersed as soon as they saw the enemy. Yet such was the strength of this position, that the very sight of the Spaniards delayed Mortier’s march, in consequence of the dispositions which he thought it necessary to make for forcing it if it had been defended, and he did not enter Plasencia till the first of August. The occupation of that place was of the greatest importance; the French had now intercepted sir Arthur’s communication with Portugal, and were enabled to manœuvre upon his rear if he advanced toward Madrid, or remained at Talavera.
♦Sir Arthur marches against him.♦
Cuesta now proposed that half the British army should march against Soult, while the other half maintained the post at Talavera. Sir Arthur said he was ready either to go or stay with the whole British army, but he would not divide it; the choice was left to him, and he preferred going, thinking his own troops were most likely to accomplish the object of the march, perhaps even without a contest. It appears that he was not aware of the enemy’s force: Cuesta estimated it at twelve or fourteen thousand, and Sir Arthur did not at that time suppose it to be larger. He preferred the alternative of going for another reason also, feeling it of more importance to him that the communication through Plasencia should be opened than it was to the Spaniards, though highly important to them also. The movements of Victor in front induced him to suppose that the enemy, despairing of any better success at Talavera than they had already experienced, intended to fall upon Sir R. Wilson, and force a passage by Escalona: thus to act in concert with Soult between the Alberche and the Tietar. Sir Robert also felt himself seriously menaced, and some letters which he intercepted gave him sufficient information to ascertain that these were the plans of the enemy; he therefore informed the British General that he should remove his artillery to St. Roman, occupy the Panada with 300 men, a strong height behind Montillo with 600 more, from whence there was a good retreat to St. Valuela, and return with the rest to a position, in readiness either to occupy Valuela, or obey such instructions as he might receive. In this state of things, Sir Arthur perceived how possible it was that Cuesta might be forced to quit Talavera before he could return to it, and this made him uneasy for his hospital. At all events, he thought it too far advanced. He therefore entreated Cuesta to make a requisition for carts, and remove the wounded as expeditiously as was consistent with their safety, by first sending them to an intermediate station at no great distance, from whence they might gradually be passed to the place which should ultimately be fixed upon. He wrote to Bassecourt, requesting that he, with that division which had been dispatched to secure the passes after they had been lost, would halt at Centiello, and watch the vale of Plasencia; and he again recommended to the Spanish commander, that Venegas should be ordered to threaten Madrid by the road of Arganda, that being the only means whereby it was possible to alarm the enemy, and make him divide his forces.
♦Aug. 3.
Cuesta determines to follow Sir Arthur.♦
Having thus taken every precaution, he marched to Oropesa, with the intention of either compelling Soult to retreat, or giving him battle. At five in the evening he learned that the enemy were at Naval Moral, not more than eighteen miles distant; thus having placed themselves between him and the bridge of Almaraz, as if they meant to cut off his retreat across the Tagus. An hour afterwards dispatches came from Talavera, inclosing an intercepted letter from Jourdan to Soult, wherein the latter was told that the British army was at least 25,000 strong, and yet he was ordered to bring it to action wherever he could find it; from this Cuesta inferred that Soult could not have less than 30,000 men, and this was the precise number at which the friar, on whom the letter had been found, stated his army. But the most grievous part of the intelligence was, that Victor was again advancing, and had reached St. Olalla, and that Cuesta, seeing himself threatened both in front and in flank, and apprehending the British would require assistance, was determined to march and join them. Painful as it was thus to abandon the wounded, he considered that he must have abandoned them if he were driven from the position, and that position being now open on the left, he did not think himself able to maintain it. Sir Arthur immediately wrote to represent that the danger was far less imminent than Cuesta apprehended; the enemy, he thought, were not likely to attack Talavera, nor to occupy the British long. It would be time to march when they knew that the French had forced their way at Escalona, or were breaking up from St. Olalla. Victor was certainly alone, and Sebastiani and the Intruder occupied by Venegas. At all events he urged him to delay his march till the next day, send off his commissariat and baggage before him, and halt in the woods till the wounded were arrived at the bridge of Arzobispo. Soult’s force, he said, was certainly overrated.
Sir Arthur’s mistake upon this subject arose from his being ignorant that Mortier had formed a junction with this army. He supposed that it consisted only of the corps of Soult and Ney, who had brought out of Galicia 18,000 men, the remains of 36,000 with which they entered that country. Cuesta, however, was better informed; and he himself altered his opinion of the enemy’s force when he considered the positive orders which the Intruder had given for attacking the British army, supposing it to consist ♦Cuesta joins the British.♦ of 25,000 men. Cuesta had not asked Sir Arthur’s advice, and did not wait to receive it: he left Talavera before it reached him, marched all night, and joined the British at Oropesa soon after daylight on the 4th. His apprehension of danger to himself was well founded: it was not without great exertions and heavy loss that the combined armies had repulsed the French at Talavera; well, therefore, might he despair of withstanding them alone if they returned to the attack. But the danger which by this hasty retreat he averted from himself, he brought upon Venegas and Sir Arthur; and the latter, in addition to the mortification of having his wounded fall into the hands of the enemy, saw himself exposed to an attack in front and in rear at the same time by two armies, each superior ♦They retreat across the Tagus.♦ to his own. It was absolutely necessary to retreat, otherwise nothing but two victories could extricate the troops from their perilous situation, and they were little capable of extraordinary exertions, not having had their full allowance of provisions for several days. The bridge of Almaraz had been destroyed, and when the Marquess de la Reyna abandoned his post at the pass, he made for this point, with the intention of removing the bridge of boats that had been placed there; the boats indeed might be still in the river, but it was thought impossible to reach Almaraz without a battle. If he moved on to give the enemy battle, the French from Talavera would break down the bridge of Arzobispo, and thus intercept the only way by which a retreat was practicable; the same danger would be incurred if he took a position at Oropesa. Nothing remained, therefore, but to cross at Arzobispo, while it was yet in his power, and take up a defensive post upon the Tagus: the sooner a defensive line should be taken, the more likely were the troops to be able to defend it. On the day, therefore, that Cuesta formed his unfortunate junction, Sir Arthur retreated by this route, and crossed. Cuesta followed on the night of the 5th.
♦Col. Mackinnon removes some of the wounded.♦
Sir Arthur had left Colonel Mackinnon in command at Talavera with the charge of the sick and wounded, amounting, with those attached to the hospital, to about 5000 persons. On the evening of one day the charge had been given him, and on the next at noon Cuesta informed him that Soult was at Plasencia with 30,000 men, and that Victor was in his front, only six leagues distant; the monk who discovered their plans, being the bearer of a letter from the Intruder to Soult, was in the room: it was his intention to retire at dusk with the Spanish army and join Sir Arthur, and the hospital had better be got off before that time. Colonel Mackinnon had been instructed, in case of such necessity, to make for Merida by way of the Puente del Arzobispo: but it was with difficulty he could procure from Cuesta seven waggons to remove a few of the wounded. There was no alternative but to recommend those whom there was no possibility of removing to the honour and humanity of the French commanders; and Colonel Mackinnon, who had lived in France, and was in every respect one of the most accomplished officers in the British army, did this in a manner which was believed to have had great effect in obtaining for them the humane and honourable treatment they received. All who were able to march were ordered to assemble at three that afternoon, and proceed to Calera that night, ... a town which the French had completely destroyed. The next day they were overtaken at Arzobispo by the British army, and instead of passing the night there, as had been intended, were ordered to proceed. Forty bullock-cars were added to their means of transport, but in such ill repair for some of the worst roads in the world, that only eleven of them reached Deleitosa. A more difficult six days’ march could hardly be conceived, and the difficulty was of a kind more trying to a brave and feeling mind than danger. There was only a commissary’s clerk to provide for them, and the runaway Spaniards were plundering the small magazines in all the villages. Reports that the French had crossed the Tagus, and were in their front, alarmed his men, who were in no condition for the field, and many of them took to the mountains. Mackinnon mustered his force in a convent near Deleitosa; it consisted then of 2000 men, and these he conducted to Elvas, without magazines, with no assistance from the magistrates, who, on the contrary, sometimes evinced a hostile disposition; and with such want of humanity on the part of the people (made callous by selfishness, and selfish by necessity), that he was often obliged to use violent means, or the men must have been starved.