The 13th a junction was effected with Latour Maubourg, who assumed the command of the heavy cavalry, resigning the fifth corps to General Girard.
On the 14th, having reached Villa Franca, thirty miles from Badajos, Soult caused his heaviest guns to fire salvos in the night to notify his approach to the garrison. This expedient failed, but on the evening of the 15th the whole French army was concentrated at Santa Marta.
Beresford had raised the siege in the night of the 12th, against the wish of the chief engineer, who promised him the place in three days! This promise was nought, and had it been good Soult would yet have surprised him in his trenches: his firmness therefore saved the army, and his arrangements for carrying off the stores were well executed. By twelve o’clock on the 15th the guns and stores were on the left bank of the Guadiana, the gabions and fascines were burnt, the flying-bridge removed; all being so well masked by the fourth division, which in concert with the Spaniards continued to maintain the investment, that a sally on the rear-guard, in which some Portuguese picquets were roughly treated, first told the French the siege was raised—of the cause they were still ignorant.
Beresford held a conference with the Spanish generals at Valverde on the 13th, and the chief command was ceded to him by the management of Castaños, to the discontent of Blake, who soon showed his ill-will. It was agreed to receive battle at the village of Albuera. Ballesteros’ and Blake’s corps had then united, and Blake engaged to bring them into line before twelve o’clock on the 15th. Meanwhile, Badajos being the centre of an arc sweeping through Valverde, Albuera and Talavera Real, it was arranged that Blake should watch the roads on the right; the British and fifth Spanish army those leading upon the centre, and Madden’s Portuguese cavalry those on the left. The main body of the British could thus reach Albuera by a half march, as no part of the arc was more than four leagues from Badajos, and the enemy was still eight leagues from Albuera: Beresford therefore, thinking he could not be forestalled on any point of importance, kept the fourth division in the trenches.
On the 14th Colborne rejoined the army, Madden took post at Talavera Real, Blake was in march and his dragoons had joined the Anglo-Portuguese cavalry under General Long, who was at Santa Marta.
In the morning of the 15th the Anglo-Portuguese army occupied the left half of the Albuera position, a ridge four miles long, having the stream of the Aroya Val de Sevilla in rear and the Albuera in front. The ascent from the last river was easy for cavalry and artillery, and in advance of the centre were the bridge and village of Albuera—the former commanded by a battery, the latter occupied by Alten’s Germans. Behind Alten, the second division, under William Stewart, formed one line, the right on a commanding hill over which the Valverde road passed, the left on the road of Badajos, beyond which the array was continued on two lines by the Portuguese troops under Hamilton and Collins.
The right of the ground being roughest, highest, and broadest, was left open for Blake, because Beresford, thinking the hill on the Valverde road the key of the position as covering the only line of retreat, was desirous to secure it with his own troops. The fourth division and the infantry of the fifth Spanish army were still before Badajos, but had orders to march on the first signal.
About three o’clock on the evening of the 15th, Beresford being on the left, the whole mass of the allied cavalry, closely followed by the French light horsemen, came pouring in from Santa Marta, and finding no infantry beyond the Albuera to support them passed that river in retreat. The wooded heights on the right bank being thus abandoned to the enemy, his force and dispositions were effectually concealed and the strength of the position was already sapped. Beresford was disquieted, he formed a temporary right wing with his cavalry and artillery, stretched his picquets along the road by which Blake was expected, and sent officers to hasten his movements; that general had only a few miles of good road to march and promised to be in line at noon, yet did not even bring up his van before eleven at night, nor his rear before three in the morning.
Cole and Madden were now called up. The order failed to reach Madden; but Cole brought the infantry of the fifth army, two squadrons of Portuguese cavalry, and two brigades of his own division to Albuera between eight and nine o’clock on the morning of the 16th: his third brigade having invested San Christoval was unable to pass the Guadiana above Badajos, and was in march by Jerumenha. Cole’s Spanish troops joined Blake on the right, the two brigades of the fourth division were drawn up in columns behind the second division, the Portuguese squadrons reinforced Colonel Otway, whose horsemen, of the same nation, were pushed forwards in front of the left wing: all the rest of the allied cavalry was concentrated behind the centre, and Beresford, dissatisfied with General Long, gave Lumley the chief command.
Thirty thousand infantry, more than two thousand cavalry, and thirty-eight pieces of artillery, eighteen being nine-pounders, were now in line; but one brigade of the fourth division was still absent, the British infantry, the pith and strength of battle, did not exceed seven thousand, and already Blake’s arrogance was shaking Beresford’s authority. The French had forty guns, four thousand veteran cavalry and nineteen thousand chosen infantry: obedient to one discipline, animated by one national feeling, their composition compensated for the want of numbers, and their general’s talent was immeasurably greater than his adversary’s.