Wellington, in short, had offered battle on the Huebra, on the evening of the 17th, and Soult had refused it, seeing that the bulk of the allied army was concentrated close behind that river, while his own infantry divisions were still straggling up from the rear. Nor had he any intention of following next day--he wrote to King Joseph that ‘I told your Majesty that seeing the retreat of the enemy upon the Agueda well pronounced, and having no hope of being able to engage him in a general action before he has terminated his movement, I should put a limit to my pursuit after passing the Huebra, and should move off towards the upper Tormes, to enable the army to collect the food which it lacks.’ The regret expressed at being unable to force on a battle was of course insincere. All that Soult did was to wait till the British rearguard had abandoned the line of the Huebra, and then move his advanced cavalry to Cabrillas, from which some small reconnoitring parties pushed as far as the Yeltes river[206], and then came back, reporting that it was impossible to pass that flooded stream without bridges, and that the British were all across it. On the morning of the 19th the whole French army retired eastward, marching by Tamames and Linares towards Salvatierra. The truth was that the French were by now suffering almost as much from fatigue and want of food as the British. They could not ‘live on the country’, and the diet of acorns, of which several diarists speak, was as repugnant to the pursuers as to the pursued.