Wellington during the critical days from January 20th to February 6th was naturally anxious. He knew that Marmont would concentrate against him, but he hoped (as indeed he was justified in doing) that the concentration would be slow and imperfect, and that the Marshal would find himself too weak to advance from Salamanca. His anxiety was made somewhat greater than it need have been, by a false report that Foy and Montbrun were already returned from the Alicante expedition--he was told that both had got back to Toledo by the beginning of January[220]--a most mischievous piece of false news. An equally groundless rumour informed him that Bonnet had left the Asturias, many days before his departure actually took place. On January 21 he wrote to Lord Liverpool that Bonnet had passed Benavente on his way to Salamanca, and that ‘the whole of what had gone eastward’ [i. e. Foy and Montbrun] was reported to be coming up from the Tagus to Valladolid, so that in a few days Marmont might possibly have 50,000 men in hand[221]. To make himself strong against such a concentration he ordered Hill, on January 22, to bring up three brigades of the 2nd Division to Castello Branco, with which he might join the main army at a few days’ notice[222]. At the same time he directed General Abadia to send a force to occupy the Asturias, which must be empty since Bonnet had evacuated it. It was not till some days later that he got the reassuring, and correct, news that Foy and Montbrun, instead of being already at the front in Castile, were not even expected at Toledo till January 29th, and that Bonnet had started late, and was only at La Baneza when February had already begun. But, by the time that he had received this information, it had already become evident that Marmont was not about to take the offensive, and Ciudad Rodrigo was already in a condition to resist a _coup-de-main_; while, since the whole siege-train of the Army of Portugal had been captured therein, it was certain that the Marshal could not come up provided with the artillery required for a regular siege. [220] See _Dispatches_, viii. p. 547. [221] I fancy that Wellington’s erroneous statement that Marmont had six divisions collected at Salamanca on the 23rd-24th [misprinted by Gurwood, _Dispatches_, viii. p. 577, as ‘the 6th Division!’] was Napier’s source for stating that such a force was assembled, which it certainly was not, Wellington reckoned that Marmont had Souham, Clausel, Maucune, Thiébault, and two divisions from the East, which last had not really come up--and never were to do so. [222] Wellington to Hill, Jan. 22, _Dispatches_, viii. p. 566.