While these events were passing in La Mancha, Estremadura was also invaded; for the king having received a despatch from Soult, dated Orense and giving notice that the second corps would be at Oporto about the 15th of March, had reiterated the orders that Lapisse should move to Abrantes, and that the duke of Belluno should pass the Tagus, and drive Cuesta beyond the Guadiana. Victor, who appears for some reason to have been averse to aiding the operations of the second corps, remonstrated, and especially urged that the order to Lapisse should be withdrawn, lest his division should arrive too soon, and without support, at Abrantes. This time, however, the king was firm, and, on the 14th of March, the duke of Belluno, having collected five days’ provisions, made the necessary dispositions to pass the Tagus. [Sidenote: General Semelé’s Journal of Operations, MS.] The amount of the Spanish force immediately on that river was about sixteen thousand men; but Cuesta had several detachments and irregular bands in his rear, which may be calculated at eight thousand more. The Duke of Belluno, however, estimated the troops in position before him at thirty thousand, a great error for so experienced a commander to make. But, on the other hand, Cuesta was as ill informed; for this was the moment when, with his approbation, colonel D’Urban proposed to sir John Cradock, that curiously combined attack against Victor, already noticed; in which, the Spaniards were to cross the Tagus, and sir Robert Wilson was to come down upon the Tietar. This, also, was the period that Mr. Frere, apparently ignorant that there were at least twenty-five thousand fighting men in the valley of the Tagus, without reckoning the king’s or Sebastiani’s troops, proposed that the twelve thousand British, under sir John Cradock, should march from Lisbon to “drive the fourth French corps from Toledo,” and “consequently,” as he phrased it, “from Madrid.” The first movement of marshal Victor awakened Cuesta from these dreams. The bridges of Talavera and Arzobispo were, as we have seen, held by the French; and their advanced posts were pushed into the valley of the Tagus, as far as the Barca de Bazagona. Cuesta’s position extended from Garbin, near the bridge of Arzobispo, to the bridge of Almaraz. His centre being at Meza d’Ibor, a position of surprising strength, running at right angles from the Tagus to the Guadalupe. The head-quarters and reserves were at Deleytosa; and a road, cut by the troops, afforded a communication between that place and Meza d’Ibor. On the right bank of the Tagus there was easy access to the bridges of Talavera, Arzobispo, and Almaraz; but on the left bank no road existed, except from Almaraz, by which artillery could pass the mountains, and even that was crossed by the ridge of Mirabete, which stretching on a line parallel to the river, and at the distance of four or five miles, affords an almost impregnable position.