There was one plea that might have been urged in favour of an instant move toward Talavera and the Tagus route (the right wing to march by Illescas and Fuensalida, the left by Madrid and Navalcarnero), but it was a plea of which neither Wellington nor Hill seems to have thought. Supposing that Hill’s 40,000 men after uncovering and evacuating Madrid should place themselves behind the Alberche, in and about Talavera, it was difficult to believe that Soult and King Joseph would dare to march north to join Souham and to trouble Wellington. They could hardly leave 40,000 men behind them uncontained, and would probably have to halt and to face toward Hill, so as to cover the capital. This threat to their flank and their rear might force the enemy to come to a stop, and might secure Wellington’s rear as effectually as a junction with him at Arevalo behind the Adaja. But on the other hand there were two considerations which tended to make any use of the Tagus route undesirable, save on compulsion and as a _pis aller_. The first was that the whole valley from Toledo to Almaraz was in a state of dreadful exhaustion, with half its land untilled and its population living on the edge of starvation. To subsist there would be difficult. The second and more important was that the enemy might conceivably leave Soult and the Army of the South to hold Madrid and contain Hill’s force, and then would still possess 20,000 men--of the Cuenca column--who might be sent by the Guadarrama and Villacastin to take Wellington in the rear. It would be of little use to bring the enemy to a standstill in the direction of Madrid, if he could still spare a detachment which would make Wellington’s position in Old Castile hopelessly untenable, and might even put him in grave danger of being overwhelmed.