On the 30th the French army appeared in front of Rodrigo, and Carlos de España, leaving 3,000 men as garrison there, under General Vives, retired with the small remainder of his division towards the Portuguese frontier. He was pursued and molested by the enemy’s cavalry, not having been covered or assisted, as Wellington had directed, by Victor Alten’s regiment of German Hussars. That officer, neglecting his orders in the most flagrant fashion, did not retire slowly and in a fighting posture, when the French drove in his line of vedettes in front of Rodrigo, but collected his regiment and rode hard for Castello Branco, without concerning himself in the least as to the safety of the Spanish and Portuguese forces in his neighbourhood, or the procuring of intelligence as to the strength and the purpose of the French army. His carelessness or shirking of responsibility, which was to be displayed in still worse form as the campaign went on, drew on him such a sharp and bitter rebuke from Wellington that it is a wonder that he was not sent home forthwith[313]. [313] Wellington to V. Alten, April 18, ‘You were desired “not to be in a hurry,” to give them (España and General Baccelar) your countenance so far as might be in your power, and to tell them that you were left in the front for a particular object.... I beg you to observe that if you had assembled the 1st Hussars at Pastores on March 30 and April 1, the Agueda being then scarcely fordable for cavalry, you could have kept open the communications between Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo.... You wrote on the seventh from Castello Branco that you knew nothing about the enemy! and instead of receiving from you (as I had expected) a daily account of their operations, you knew nothing, and, from the way in which you made your march, all those were driven off the road who might have given me intelligence, and were destined to keep up the communication between me and Carlos de España.’ Marmont looked at Rodrigo, but refused to attempt anything against it, though he was informed that the garrison was undisciplined and dispirited. Without siege artillery he held that it was useless to attack the place. After sending in a formal summons to Vives (who gave the proper negative answer in round terms), and throwing into the streets a few shells from the howitzers attached to his field-batteries, he told off Brennier’s division to blockade Rodrigo, as also to guard a flying bridge which he cast across the Agueda at La Caridad, a few miles up-stream.