Lord Wellington halted at Toro, that the light division and the troops under Sir Rowland might cross the Douro by the bridge there, that his rear-guard might come up, and that the Galician army should unite itself with his left. The whole of the allied force was now on the right side of the Douro: leaving then half the reserve-ammunition near Zamora to spare the horses (which were already suffering), he proceeded: the French, whose force was distributed between Valladolid, Tordesillas, and Medina, retiring as he advanced, their rear crossing at the Puente de Duero, on the same day that the allies accomplished their first object in the campaign, by uniting on the right side of that river. The enemy now concentrated their force behind the Pisuerga: there also there was strong ground for defence; but abandoning that also when Lord Wellington manœuvred on their right, they withdrew behind the Carrion. The Intruder quitted Palencia on the 6th, and the greater part of his troops early on the following morning, after a night passed in the fear of close pursuit. When Lord Wellington entered that city, flowers were thrown upon him from the windows, and a shower of roses from the upper gratings of a nunnery. The enemy had not left a morsel of bread, nor a drop of wine in that city: and when they hastily retired from a bivouac near Tordesillas, leaving it to be occupied by a part of Sir Rowland’s corps, the fuel which the troops found collected there consisted of doors, window-frames, tables, and drawers, from the houses in the neighbourhood. From the Ezla to Palencia the troops had marched through one continued track of corn, where villages were so thinly scattered, that it seemed unaccountable where the cultivators were to be found. The land was generally in wheat, with a fair proportion of barley, and here and there a crop of vetches and clover. They moved generally by two roads, and on each side of each at least twenty yards were trampled down. The horses were fed on green barley nearly the whole march. The intention of the British Government was to pay the inhabitants for whatever the army must of necessity take from them; and on the part of the Government, the full payment was in fact made: but little of that payment reached the poor people to whom it was due. For want of specie, the commissaries could pay upon the spot only in bills; to the peasantry these were worth no more than what the land-sharks who follow in the wake of an army chose to offer for them; and in this iniquitous manner large fortunes were amassed, ... a species of roguery which many of the Portugueze (though as a people the Portugueze are eminent for probity) were not slow in learning. ♦THE FRENCH ABANDON BURGOS.♦