3º.--The line of retreat upon Medellin and Campanarios, instead of Badajos, being determined by the necessity of uniting with Albuquerque, cannot be blamed, and the immediate return to Medellin was bold and worthy of praise, but its merit consisted in recovering the offensive immediately after a defeat; wherefore, Cuesta should not have halted at Medellin, thus giving the lead again to the French general; he should have continued to advance, and have fallen upon the scattered divisions of the French army, endeavouring to beat them in detail, and to rally his own detachments in the Sierra de Guadalupe. The error of stopping short at Medellin would have been apparent, if Victor, placing a rear-guard to amuse the Spanish general, had taken the road to Seville by Almendralejos and Zafra. 4º. Cuesta’s general design for the battle of Medellin was well imagined, that is, it was right to hide his army behind the ridge, and to defer the attack until the enemy had developed his force and order of battle in the plain, but the execution was on the lowest scale. If, instead of advancing in one long and weak line, without a reserve, Cuesta had held the greatest part of his troops in solid columns, and thrust them between Lassalle and Latour Maubourg’s divisions, which were pushed out like horns from the main body of the French, those generals would have been cut off, and the battle commenced by dividing the French army into three unconnected masses, while the Spaniards would have been compact, well in hand, and masters of the general movements. Nothing could then have saved Victor, except hard fighting; but Cuesta’s actual dispositions rendered it impossible for the Spaniards to win the battle by courage, or to escape the pursuit by swiftness. 5º. It is remarkable that the Spanish general seems never to have thought of putting Truxillo, Guadalupe, Merida, Estrella, or Medellin in a state of defence, although most if not all those places had some castle or walls capable of resisting a sudden assault. There was time to do it, for Cuesta remained unmolested, on the Tagus, from January to the middle of March; and every additional point of support thus obtained for an undisciplined army would have diminished the advantages derived by the French from their superior facility of movement. The places themselves might have been garrisoned by the citizens and peasantry, and a week’s, a day’s, nay, even an hour’s, delay was of importance to a force like Cuesta’s, which, from its inexperience, must have always been liable to confusion. SOULT.