Having thus taken every precaution, he marched to Oropesa, with the intention of either compelling Soult to retreat, or giving him battle. At five in the evening he learned that the enemy were at Naval Moral, not more than eighteen miles distant; thus having placed themselves between him and the bridge of Almaraz, as if they meant to cut off his retreat across the Tagus. An hour afterwards dispatches came from Talavera, inclosing an intercepted letter from Jourdan to Soult, wherein the latter was told that the British army was at least 25,000 strong, and yet he was ordered to bring it to action wherever he could find it; from this Cuesta inferred that Soult could not have less than 30,000 men, and this was the precise number at which the friar, on whom the letter had been found, stated his army. But the most grievous part of the intelligence was, that Victor was again advancing, and had reached St. Olalla, and that Cuesta, seeing himself threatened both in front and in flank, and apprehending the British would require assistance, was determined to march and join them. Painful as it was thus to abandon the wounded, he considered that he must have abandoned them if he were driven from the position, and that position being now open on the left, he did not think himself able to maintain it. Sir Arthur immediately wrote to represent that the danger was far less imminent than Cuesta apprehended; the enemy, he thought, were not likely to attack Talavera, nor to occupy the British long. It would be time to march when they knew that the French had forced their way at Escalona, or were breaking up from St. Olalla. Victor was certainly alone, and Sebastiani and the Intruder occupied by Venegas. At all events he urged him to delay his march till the next day, send off his commissariat and baggage before him, and halt in the woods till the wounded were arrived at the bridge of Arzobispo. Soult’s force, he said, was certainly overrated.