Joseph, as was perhaps natural, gave his final decision in favour of Soult’s plan. It was true that he had a marked superiority in numbers, and that a defeat of a crushing sort inflicted on Wellington would go far to end the Peninsular War. No such army on the French side had ever been in line on a single field before in Spain. Jourdan’s estimate of 80,000 men was a decided understatement, even allowing for the fact that Soult’s divisions had already many stragglers, and that Souham had left a ‘minimum’ garrison at Valladolid. Something much more like the 90,000 men at which Wellington estimated the three united French armies must have been collected[168]. On the other hand there is a dreadful risk taken when an army endeavours to cross a group of fords, supplemented at the best by some hastily constructed bridges, in face of an enemy known to be wary, active, and determined. What might not happen if Wellington fell upon the leading divisions, while the rest were crowding down to their crossing points? Or who could guarantee that sudden rain in the Sierra de Francia might not cause the Tormes to rise three feet on the battle day, and separate the troops who had crossed from those still on the eastern bank? Every one at the French head-quarters must have remembered Essling, and the narrow escape from supreme disaster there suffered from the caprice of the Danube. On the whole, the prospect of the enormous advantage to be got by inflicting a complete disaster on Wellington did not balance the possibility of loss that might follow an unsuccessful frontal attack upon his position. Joseph made his choice in favour of Soult’s plan for a flank march to the upper Tormes. This manœuvre would take several days to execute, as the Army of the South had to be moved to its left from all its cantonments facing Alba, while the Armies of the Centre and Portugal had to wait till this flank march was finished, in order to come up and take over the former positions of Soult’s divisions. For all the French chiefs were agreed that the armies must keep closed up, and that no gap must be allowed to come into existence between them. When the Army of the South should begin to cross the Tormes, the Army of Portugal must be in direct support of it, and must make no separate attack of its own to the north of Alba, in the localities which Jourdan had found so tempting. The whole of the 12th and 13th November was expended in making this shift of troops southward. Soult moved his army up-stream and placed his head-quarters at Anaya, six miles south of Alba, above the fords of Galisancho, where the crossing was to take place. The King moved to Valdecarros, a little to Soult’s right, with the Army of the Centre. The Army of Portugal, leaving its cavalry and two infantry divisions[169] as a rearguard about Huerta, moved the other six to the heights above Alba, where it was hoped that it might cross, when Soult’s manœuvre should force Hill to abandon that place and draw back.