The position of the commander of Wellington’s detached corps in front of Madrid had become a very responsible one between the 15th, when Soult’s advance began, and the 24th, when the enemy came up to the line of the Tagus and developed his attack. Fortunately Hill was in close touch with his chief: so well was the line of communication between them kept up, that it only took two days for a letter from Burgos to reach Madrid--and vice versa. When the army had come back from the Arlanzon to the Douro, the time became even shorter. Wellington received at Cabezon on the evening of October 27th dispatches that Hill had written on the morning of the 26th[122]. This contrasts wonderfully with the slow travelling of French correspondence--Souham got at Briviesca on October 17 a letter written by King Joseph at Valencia on October 1st. It had been obliged to travel by the absurdly circuitous route of Tortosa, Saragossa and Tudela. Truly the guerrilleros made concerted movements of French armies singularly difficult. On the 17th October Hill had already got off his first letter of alarm to Wellington, saying that Soult was certainly on the move; by the 19th he knew that there was a column moving upon Cuenca, as well as the larger force which was advancing by San Clemente and Belmonte. He asked for orders, but meanwhile had to issue his own, in consonance with earlier directions received from Wellington. These presupposed two conditions which had not been realized--that the fords of the Tagus would be impassable, and that Ballasteros’s Andalusian army would already have crossed the Sierra Morena to Alcaraz and be lying on Soult’s flank. But their general directions were still practicable: the line of the Tagus was to be defended unless the enemy were in overwhelming strength: if (contrary to Wellington’s expectation) the whole French force in Valencia should advance, and its numbers prove greater than Hill could hope to check, he had been directed to evacuate Madrid, and to fall back beyond the Guadarrama, in order to join his chief on the Adaja, south of Valladolid, in Old Castile[123]. The first thing necessary was to discover the strength of the enemy--all accounts sent in by the Spaniards agreed that it was very great, and in particular, that the column going by Cuenca was no mere detachment, but a solid and considerable force. Meanwhile Wellington, even as late as October 12[124], had been informing Hill that his design of marching down on Madrid with three divisions, when the siege of Burgos should be either successfully concluded or else abandoned, was still retained. Any morning a dispatch might come to say that the commander-in-chief, with 15,000 men, was on his way to Valladolid; and therefore the army in front of Madrid must be ready for him, concentrated and in marching order. For if he came in person with such a reinforcement, Soult and King Joseph could be fought and beaten, whenever they made their appearance.