On the 18th the British Army had an unmolested retreat. This did not prevent many losses of men who dropped to the rear and died of fatigue and starvation. The carcasses of dead horses all along the road had been hacked up for food. One observer saw thirteen corpses lying round a single fire: another counted so many as fifty men sitting in a clump, who declared their absolute incapacity to march a foot farther, and could not be induced to move. But the stragglers who did not perish hobbled on to the camps in the evening for the most part. The cavalry swept up large numbers of them into safety. That night the column of Hill reached Tenebron and Moras Verdes: the centre column lodged about Santi Espiritus and Alba de Yeltes. The Galicians, forming the northern column, were about Castillo de Yeltes and Fuenteroble. The march of the centre column was accompanied by the curious case of insubordination by three divisional generals (those commanding the 1st, 5th, and 7th Divisions[207]) of which Napier makes such scathing notice. Their orders gave an itinerary involving a march over fords in flooded fields; they consulted together, judged the route hopeless, and turned off towards the bridge of Castillo de Yeltes, which they found blocked by the Army of Galicia. Wellington, failing to find them on the prescribed path, set out to seek them, and came upon them waiting miserably in the mud. He is said to have given them no more rebuke than a sarcastic ‘You see, gentlemen, I know my own business best’ and allowed them to cross after the Spaniards, many hours late[208]. The insubordination was inexcusable--yet perhaps it would not have been beneath Wellington’s dignity to have prefaced his original order with an explanatory note such as ‘the main road by Castillo bridge being reserved for the Spanish divisions.’ But this would not have been in his normal style. Like Stonewall Jackson fifty years after, he was not prone to give his reasons to subordinates, even when his orders would appear to them very inexplicable.