It is now necessary to follow the movements of Sir Arthur Wellesley. The English Government continued to overrate the value of the Spanish armies; and the pressure brought to bear upon the English General was such as he could not resist. He therefore proposed to the Spanish General, Cuesta, to co-operate with his army against Victor’s forces, and ultimately against Madrid. Cuesta, whose treatment of Sir Arthur Wellesley was, on all occasions, of the most obstinate and boorish description, had an army of 33,000 men. [Sidenote: Napier.] Sir Arthur’s army, when he quitted Abrantes, numbered 20,997 men of all arms, with 30 guns. The advance of the united armies against Madrid by the valley of the Tagus had been foreseen by Napoleon, and he had ordered Soult, at the head of a powerful army, to concentrate his forces in such a manner that, on the advance of Wellesley, he could pass by his left rear, and cut him off from the base of his operations,--Lisbon and its surrounding country. The English General was far from correctly informed either of the strength or position of Soult’s army; he was urged by the English representative, Mr. Frere, and by his own Government, to take the offensive; the vacillation of Joseph Buonaparte tempted him to march on Madrid before further union could be effected among the French armies; he was further assured of the courage of the Spanish armies, the enthusiasm of the peasantry, and the abundance of supplies. On the 27th June, therefore, he broke up his camp at Abrantes, and marched towards Oropesa, to effect a junction with Cuesta. The farther he advanced, the more doubtful did he become of the sincerity of the Spaniards--a doubt which exhibited itself in the pertinacity with which he demanded from Cuesta and the Junta solemn promises to keep the English army supplied, during any farther advance, with the requisite transport and supplies. The reader does not require to be reminded how shamefully these promises were broken;--how thwarted Wellesley was, alike by the intrigues of the Junta and the conceited obstinacy of Cuesta;--nor how faithful he was, amid all his difficulties, to the duty which England had imposed upon him. Standing beside Cuesta like a better angel,--and receiving the treatment not unfrequently bestowed on such,--calm under insult, his judgment never heated by an indignation which would have been righteous,--he ultimately succeeded in placing the united armies in the very position in front of Talavera which he had selected, when he saw that a general action with the combined forces of Victor and Sebastiani was inevitable, if not, indeed, desirable. But not until the morning of the 27th July, nor until Cuesta’s folly and rashness had courted and received, at Alcabon, a well-deserved defeat, did the English General succeed in placing the Spanish forces in [Sidenote: Gurwood’s Despatches: Selections, p. 278.] the position he had chosen. The quiet