The Spaniards, where they were well commanded, behaved well; but melancholy proofs were given of the inefficient state of their armies. The whole of their commissariat took flight as soon as the action began, with all the people belonging to them; so that after the battle the allies found themselves in total want of food and resources. Three or four corps threw down their muskets without having once discharged them, and dispersed; some of them plundered the baggage. Cuesta was so indignant at this, that after the action he ordered the division to be decimated, and it was only after much entreaty from the British Commander that he consented to re-decimate those on whom the lot had fallen, and six officers and some thirty men were actually executed. Sir Arthur remarked upon this occasion, with equal humanity and wisdom, that fear of disgrace would affect the Spaniards more than fear of death, and that for this reason, among others, exertions ought to be made for clothing them in uniform. Marching to battle as they did, without any thing to distinguish them for soldiers, in the first panic they threw away their arms and accoutrements, and pretended to be peasants. Men dressed as soldiers could not thus at once put off the marks of their profession, and that being the case, they would feel that their safety depended upon keeping their arms and standing their ground; and when the whole army was uniformly clothed, it would be easy to deprive the soldier who should misbehave of a part of his uniform, or to fix upon him some mark of disgrace,--a mode of punishment, he said, the most effectual as well as the most humane. Cuesta had just experienced the good effect of such measures; the regiments whom he deprived of one of their pistols for misconduct at the battle of Medellin, behaved so well from that time, and exerted themselves so strenuously on all occasions to wipe off their disgrace, that, after the battle of Talavera, the pistol was restored to them. ♦STATE OF TALAVERA.♦