But for two mishaps--the coming on of absolutely abominable weather and the misdirection of the food-supplies by Colonel Gordon--this retreat would have been uneventful, and would have been attended with little or no loss. For the French pursuit was timid and ineffective, and only carried out by a fraction of the enemy’s army--nearly half of it halted at Salamanca, and the remaining part was not strong enough to attack Wellington. As it chanced, Gordon’s errors and the plague of immoderate rains not only cost Wellington several thousand men, but produced an impression of disaster both on the minds of those who took part in the miserable march and on those of the captious critics in London. What should have been ‘a good clean retreat’ became a rather disastrous affair. But this was not due to the enemy, and the French observers got small comfort from it--as we have already shown by quoting Foy’s perspicuous and angry comments on the operations around Salamanca[250]. Wellington got off with ‘an army in being,’ and if it was tired out, so was that of his opponents. A hundred thousand men had been scraped together from every corner of the Peninsula to overwhelm him, but had failed to do so. Meanwhile he had cleared all Spain south of the Tagus valley from the enemy, had broken their prestige, and had shaken to pieces the pretension of King Joseph to be taken seriously as the monarch of the greatest vassal-kingdom of his brother’s empire. SECTION XXXV CHAPTER I WINTER QUARTERS. DECEMBER 1812-JANUARY 1813 When the Anglo-Portuguese Army halted at Ciudad Rodrigo, and came back once more to regular rations and marches that were no longer forced, it was of course in very bad condition. The cold and wet of the last ten days’ retreat from Salamanca had caused many a man to drop dead by the way, and had sent thousands of sick to the hospitals, riddled with dysentery and rheumatism. And the hospitals and dépôts were even before this last influx loaded up with convalescents not fit for service, from the casualties of Salamanca and Burgos. The December morning states were enough to fill Wellington with dismay; of his 64[251] British battalions there were only 30,397 men present with the colours--an average of much less than 500 bayonets to the battalion. There were no less than 18,000 men in hospital--more than a third of the total strength of the infantry arm. Thirteen regiments had more men ‘sick’ than ‘effective’; twelve were down to under 300 strong[252]. The cavalry had not lost so many in proportion--they had 5,700 present under arms to 1,436 sick, but could not mount more than 5,000, owing to the loss of horses during the retreat, and the surviving horses were for the most part in bad condition.