This retrograde movement was covered by skirmishers and an increasing fire of artillery; the British, exhausted by toil and want of food, and reduced to less than fourteen thousand sabres and bayonets, could not pursue, and the Spanish army was incapable of any evolution: at six o’clock hostilities ceased, yet the battle was scarcely over when the dry grass and shrubs took fire, and a volume of flames passing with inconceivable rapidity across a part of the field, scorched in its course both the dead and the wounded! Two British generals, Mackenzie and Langworth, thirty-one officers of inferior rank, seven hundred and sixty-seven sergeants and soldiers were killed. Three generals, a hundred and ninety-two officers, three thousand seven hundred and eighteen sergeants and privates were wounded; nine officers, six hundred and forty-three sergeants and soldiers were missing: making a total loss of six thousand two hundred and sixty-eight in the two days’ fighting, of which five thousand four hundred and twenty-two fell on the 28th. On the French side, nine hundred and forty-four, including two generals, were killed. Six thousand two hundred and ninety-four were wounded, one hundred and fifty-six made prisoners; giving a total of seven thousand three hundred and eighty-nine men and officers, of which four thousand were of Victor’s corps: ten guns were taken and seven left in the woods by the French. The Spaniards returned twelve hundred men killed and wounded, but the correctness of their report was very much doubted. Early on the 29th the French quitted their position for the heights of Salinas behind the Alberche; and that day General Robert Craufurd reached the English camp with the 43rd, 52nd and 95th regiments, and immediately took charge of the outposts. These troops, after a march of twenty miles, were in _bivouac_ near Malpartida de Placencia when the alarm caused by the Spanish fugitives spread to that part. Craufurd, fearing the army was pressed, allowed his men to rest for a few hours, and then withdrawing fifty of the weakest marched with a resolution not to halt until he reached the field of battle. As the brigade advanced it met crowds of the runaways, not all Spaniards, but all propagating the vilest falsehoods: _the army was defeated--Sir Arthur Wellesley was killed--the French were only a few miles distant_: some, blinded by their fears, pretended even to point out the enemy’s posts on the nearest hills! Indignant at this shameful scene the troops pressed on with impetuous speed, and leaving only seventeen stragglers behind, in twenty-six hours crossed the field of battle, a strong compact body, having during that time marched sixty-two English miles in the hottest season of the year, each man carrying from fifty to sixty pounds weight. Had the historian Gibbon known of such an effort, he would have spared his sneer about the delicacy of modern soldiers![9]