Here, while the troops were receiving their rations, the generals held a council whether they should retreat to the borders of Valencia, and take up a position for the defence of that kingdom, which was threatened on the side of Daroca; or join the Marques del Palacio in La Mancha, and if compelled, fall back to La Carolina or Despeña-Perros; or march for Zaragoza, to attack the besiegers, and raise the siege. This was gravely proposed; but the madness of making such an attempt with an unprovided, undisciplined, routed army, dispirited by a long series of disasters, and above all, by the scandalous defeat of the preceding day, was universally acknowledged. The scheme of joining Palacio, and making for the Sierra Morena, was likewise rejected, because in the plains of La Mancha they would be exposed to the enemy’s cavalry; and it was resolved without a dissentient voice to retreat into Valencia, where there were great resources for refitting and increasing the troops. This being determined, the army reached Cuenca that night, and continued its retreat on the following morning, the artillery being sent off in the middle of the night by a better road, to join them at Almodovar del Pinar. But four-and-twenty hours of the heaviest rain rendered this road also impassable; and in spite of every exertion the greater number of the guns could not be got farther than Olmedilla, one league from Cuenca, by the following midnight, and there the escort left them. The Duke, who was with the artillery himself, in hope of expediting the most difficult part of their movements, had preceded them to Tortola, where a few of the guns had arrived, and whither the rest were to be brought next day, the worst part of the road being past. He sent orders therefore that one regiment of horse and another of foot should be dispatched to Tortola, for the purpose of escorting the artillery when it should be thus brought together, and went himself to join the army at ♦LOSS OF THE ARTILLERY.♦ Valera de arriba. On his arrival there on the evening of the 16th he found that no infantry had been sent; being barefooted and exhausted by marching in such weather, they had been deemed actually incapable of the service. Presently advice arrived that a company of the Ordenes Militares, which he had left at Tortola, had thought proper to leave the place immediately after his departure: that a party of enemy’s cavalry had come up, and that the regiment of dragoons at the very sound of the French trumpets had taken flight, abandoning the guns to them. He now ordered a battalion of infantry and the Farnese regiment of dragoons to hasten and retake them: the night was dark, the distance considerable, the roads in the worst imaginable state; and when at daybreak they came to Tortola, scarcely an hundred infantry could be mustered, the rest having lost the way, or dispersed. The dragoons behaved well, and twice made themselves masters of the guns, but to no