On that same day Maurice Mathieu entered Borja in pursuit, ... too late to make any prisoners. Ney arrived on the day following. He had been ordered to reach Agreda on the 23d, which, if he had done, the wreck of this army must have been destroyed; but he found a pretext for delay in the fatigue of his men, and a cause in the pillage of Soria. The people of that city, unmindful of the example which the Numantines had set them upon that very ground, opened their gates to the enemy. This did not save them from being plundered. Their church, and their rich wool-factors, afforded good spoil to the French; and for the sake of this booty, and that he might extort all he could from the inhabitants, Ney remained there three days, not because his men had been over-marched. But this delay enabled Castaños to reach Calatayud. He had thus escaped the danger of immediate pursuit, and men and officers had leisure now to feel the whole wretchedness of their situation. There were neither magazines nor stores here; the system of supplying the troops, which before had been miserably incomplete, was at an end, and the military chest, containing two million _reales_, had been conveyed to Zaragoza. Desperate with hunger, the men broke through all restraint, and the inhabitants fled from their houses, hardly less dismayed at the temper of their own soldiers than at the vicinity of the French. The muleteers attached to the baggage and artillery could obtain no payment, nor food either for their animals or themselves; such as could find opportunity threw away the baggage, mounted their beasts, and rode away; others abandoned them altogether, cursing their ill fortune, and yet glad to escape with their lives. The soldiers, having nothing else to stay the cravings of hunger, devoured cabbage leaves, or whatever crude vegetables they could find, and many literally dropped for want. ♦THEY ARE ORDERED TO APPROACH MADRID.♦