Blake was thus shut up in Valencia with the divisions of Miranda, Zayas, and Lardizabal, and what was left of his raw reserve battalions: altogether some 17,000 fighting-men remained with him. The loss in actual fighting had been very small--about 500 killed and wounded and as many prisoners. The French captured a good many guns in the evacuated works and a single standard. Suchet returned his total casualties at 521 officers and men, of whom no less than 50 killed and 355 wounded were among Palombini’s Italians--the only corps which can be said to have done any serious fighting[57]. The Marshal’s strategical combination would have been successful almost without bloodshed, if only Palombini had not pressed his attack so hard, and with so little necessity. But the Spanish army, which was drawn out on a long front of nine miles, without any appreciable central reserve, and with no protection for its exposed flank, was doomed to ruin the moment that the enemy appeared in overwhelming force, beyond and behind its extreme left wing. Blake’s only chance was to have watched every ford with great vigilance, and to have had a strong flying column of his best troops ready in some central position, from which it could be moved out to dispute Suchet’s passage without a moment’s delay. Far from doing this, he tied down his two veteran divisions to the defence of the strongest part of his lines, watched the fords with nothing but cavalry vedettes, and kept no central reserve at all, save 2,000 or 3,000 men of his untrustworthy ‘Reserve Division.’ In face of these dispositions the French were almost bound to be successful. A disaster was inevitable, but Blake might have made it somewhat less ruinous if he had recognized his real position promptly, and had ordered a general retreat, when Harispe’s successful turning movement became evident. In this case he would have lost Valencia, but not his army. [57] No less than three of the Italian colonels were hit, and thirty-four officers in all. As it was, a week more saw the miserable end of the campaign. Suchet’s first precaution was to ascertain whether there was any danger from the fraction of the Spanish army which Mahy and Obispo had carried off. He was uncertain how strong they were, and whether they were prepared to attack him in the rear, supposing that he should sit down to the siege of Valencia. Accordingly he sent out at dawn on the 26th December two light columns of cavalry and voltigeurs against Alcira and Cullera, whither he knew that the refugees had retired. These two reconnaissances in force discovered the enemy in position, but the moment that they were descried Mahy retreated towards Alcoy, and Obispo towards Alicante--both in such haste and disorder that it was evident that they had no fighting spirit left in them.