It must be remembered that there was no really dangerous pursuit. Soult was not strong enough to press Wellington to a general action, and knew it. On the 16th he wrote to King Joseph: ‘I think that your Majesty’s intention is that the enemy should only be followed up to the frontier. In two days the campaign will probably be at an end in these parts, for if the enemy’s army goes behind the Agueda, I cannot think that it would be at present possible to pursue it any further. I await your orders for the future destination of the Army of the South, which would be unable to stop two days in position for want of bread and forage. I propose to establish it on the upper Tormes, below Salvatierra and El Barco, where I could rest eight or ten days, to allow the men repose and to collect food[192].’ Clearly there was no offensive spirit in the Marshal, who only wished to see Wellington upon his way to Rodrigo, and then contemplated turning back to the upper Tormes. On the 16th there was little to record in the way of military operations. The British Army started at dawn from its wet bivouacks behind the Valmusa river, having received no distribution of food. The side roads, on which the larger part of the troops were moving, grew worse and worse as the rain continued. The weakly men began to fall behind, the shirkers to slip away into the woods, to look for peasants to plunder and roofs to shelter them from the drenching rain. After the usual midday halt the bad news went round that the supply column had gone off on the wrong road--via Ledesma--and that there would again be no distribution of rations that evening. All that the troops got was the carrion-like meat of over-driven bullocks hastily slaughtered, and acorns gathered in the oak woods through which the roads ran. These, we are assured, though bitter and hard, were better than nothing. It was only in the evening, after the infantry had encamped behind the brook that gets its name from the village of Matilla, that the pursuing French cavalry came up on the two southern roads, and engaged in a bickering skirmish with the screen of allied horse covering the rear. The Polish Lancers, 2nd Hussars, and 5th and 27th Chasseurs engaged in an interchange of partial charges with the 14th Light Dragoons and K.G.L. Hussars of Victor Alten’s brigade, in front of the camps of the 2nd Division. It was brought to a sudden end by the light company of the 28th and two guns opening fire on the French from under the cover of a woodside, on which the enemy went off, with a loss of some 50 men, mostly wounded prisoners[193]. Alten’s brigade suffered much less. The centre column saw very little of the pursuing French--Digeon’s Dragoons--who made no attempt to press in. The cavalry of the Army of Portugal acted even more feebly on the northernmost of the three parallel roads. Yet the retreating army lost several hundred ‘missing’ this day, all stragglers or weakly men captured singly on the road,