Even if the cavalry had all been properly mounted, they would have been far too few in proportion to the other arms, only 15,000 out of a total force of 130,000--one in eight; whereas in the time of the Napoleonic wars one in six, or even one in five, was considered the proper complement. In the Waterloo campaign the French had the enormous number of 21,000 cavalry to 83,000 infantry--one to four. What with original paucity, and with want of remounts, the Spaniards took the field in 1808, when the insurrection began, with a ridiculously small number of horsemen. At Medina de Rio Seco they had only 750 horsemen to 22,000 foot-soldiers, at Baylen only 1,200 to 16,000. Later in the war they succeeded in filling up the ranks of the old cavalry regiments, and in raising many new ones. But the gain in number was not in the least accompanied by a gain in efficiency. For the whole six years of the struggle the mounted arm was the weakest point of their hosts. Again and again it disgraced itself by allowing itself to be beaten by half its own numbers, or by absconding early in the fight and abandoning its infantry. It acquired, and merited, a detestable reputation, and it is hard to find half a dozen engagements in which it behaved even reasonably well[74]. When Wellington was made generalissimo of the Spanish armies in 1813 he would not bring it up to the front at all, and though he took 40,000 Spaniards over the Pyrenees, there was not a horseman among them. It is hard to account for the thorough worthlessness of these squadrons, even when we make allowance for all the difficulties of the time: Spain was notoriously deficient in decent cavalry officers when the war began. The horses were inferior to the French, and the equipment bad. From early disasters the troopers contracted a demoralization which they could never shake off. But granting all this, it is still impossible to explain the consistent misbehaviour of these evasive squadrons. The officers, no doubt, had a harder task in organizing their new levies than those of the infantry and artillery, but it is curious that they should never have succeeded in learning their business even after four or five years of war. [74] The successful and opportune charge of the _regimiento del Rey_ at Talavera was about the only case which ever came under English eyes.