There were now 8,000 or 9,000 enemies in this quarter, still quite close to Madrid, and Joseph and Jourdan had to come to a difficult decision. If a garrison were left in Madrid, and a strong column sent to evict Elio from his position, the Army of the Centre would have few troops left who could follow Soult in the pursuit of Wellington. But if the whole Army of the Centre marched by the Guadarrama, there was nothing to prevent Elio from coming down to reoccupy Madrid, and the political effect of the evacuation of the capital would be detestable, for it would look as if the whole French army was but a flying column incapable of holding what it had won[137]. After some hesitation the King and Jourdan resolved that the military necessity of taking forward every available man to crush Wellington was all-important. If Soult alone joined the Army of Portugal in Old Castile the French in this direction would not outnumber the combined forces of Wellington and Hill, and might be brought to a stand--perhaps even beaten. The 20,000 men of the Cuenca column must be brought forward at all costs to secure a numerical superiority for the French arms in the North. Madrid therefore must be abandoned, and the infantry of the King’s army marched out of it on the 6th and 8th November, Palombini bringing up the rear once more. Even the sick and Joseph’s Spanish courtiers had to be taken on, with a comfortless assurance that they might in the end be dropped at Valladolid[138]. On the 8th the leading division of the Army of the Centre reached Villacastin by forced marches, the rear did not get up till the 10th[139]. Thus it is clear that on November 5th, when Hill executed his flank movement on Fontiveros and Peñaranda, there was nothing near him save Soult’s advanced cavalry, supported at an interval by the infantry of the Army of the South, while the Army of the Centre had not even left Madrid. If Wellington had but known this, it might have brought about a change in his orders; but--as cannot too often be repeated--the ‘fog of war’ sometimes lies very thick around a general at the moment when he has to make his crucial decision, and on these two days the enemy _might_ have been closed up, instead of being strung out in detachments over a hundred miles of mountain roads. A few days after the French left Madrid the Empecinado came down to the capital and occupied it--Elio had gone off, according to Wellington’s original orders, to place himself in communication with the Army of Andalusia (now no longer under Ballasteros) and took post in La Mancha. Bassecourt reoccupied Cuenca. There was not a French soldier left in New Castile, and all communication between Soult and King Joseph on one side and Suchet in Valencia on the other, were completely broken off. SECTION XXXIV: CHAPTER V THE BURGOS RETREAT. THE OPERATIONS ROUND SALAMANCA. NOVEMBER 1-NOVEMBER 15, 1812