When the Central Junta were informed of these movements, they imputed the disastrous measure to Henestrosa’s abandonment of his post, and ordered Cuesta to proceed against him with all the rigour of the law. But the old General, though disposed at first to condemn him, was too generous to do this. He replied that the Camp-Marshal had in all other cases behaved well, and with a courage amounting to rashness, and that in this he had acted only under an error of judgement. He met with no enemies on his night march, and halting in the morning beyond the Rio Monte, learnt that the detachment which he had expected to encounter was taking a direction for Truxillo. To Truxillo he proceeded on his retreat, and, leaving Henestrosa to cover that city, took up a position at the Puerto de Santa Cruz, forty miles from the stronger pass whence he had retreated. There it was his intention to wait till it should be seen whether Alburquerque’s division could effect its junction, and whether it ♦MARCH 20.♦ would make him equal to the enemy. On the following morning Henestrosa was attacked, and driven to a little bridge on the other side of Truxillo: there he repulsed the enemy, and the skirmishing continued all day, with equal loss on either side, the Spaniards behaving in such a manner as to increase the General’s confidence in his troops. Cuesta expected now to be attacked on the morrow, either in front or on his left toward the village of Abertura, and had made up his mind to abide an action. But Cuesta’s resolutions were sometimes changed with as little consideration as they had been taken, for he was a man who acted more frequently upon the impulse of the moment than upon reflection. The whole of Victor’s force was collected at Truxillo; his advanced parties kept the Spaniards upon the alarm as well as the alert, and Cuesta then began to apprehend that the Puerto de S. Cruz was not defensible against the superior force that would be brought against him, especially as the ground was not favourable for cavalry. In the morning, therefore, he recommenced his retreat, evidently not knowing whither, and with no determined purpose, but in good order and in good heart, for, injudicious and ruinous as all the late movements had been, the men were not yet dispirited. While he was halting near Miajadas to refresh the troops, the _chasseurs_ of the enemy’s advanced guard approached near enough to expose themselves; the advantage was well taken, and the French Colonel tore his hair in an agony of grief when he saw some hundred and fifty of his ♦ROCCA, 93.♦ finest men cut down. This success was obtained by the regiments of Infante and Almanza. It raised the spirits of the men, a feeling of useful emulation was showing itself, and Cuesta formed the wise resolution (if he had been steady enough in his purposes to have kept it) of exercising them in various movements from one position to another, without exposing them in battle, and thus detaining the enemy