The English general’s resolution to halt at Talavera made little impression upon Cuesta. A French corps had retreated before him, and Madrid, nay, the Pyrennees themselves, instantly rose on the view of the sanguine Spaniard: he was resolved to be the first in the capital, and he pushed forward in pursuit, reckless alike of military discipline and of the friendly warnings of sir Arthur; who vainly admonished him to open his communications as quickly as possible with Venegas, and to beware how he let the enemy know that the British and Spanish armies were separated. In the fulness of his arrogant vanity, Cuesta crossed the Alberche on the 24th, and being unable to ascertain the exact route of the French, pursued them, by the road of Toledo, as far as Cebolla, and, by the road of Madrid, as far as El Bravo. On the 25th, still inflated with pride, he caused the troops at Cebolla to move on to Torrijos, and marched himself to St. Ollalla. The 26th he discovered that he had been pursuing a tiger. Meanwhile sir Arthur Wellesley, foreseeing the consequence of this imprudence, had sent general Sherbrooke, with two divisions of British infantry and all the cavalry, across the Alberche, to Cazalegas, where, being centrically situated with respect to Talavera, St. Ollalla, and Escalona, he could support the Spaniards, and, at the same time, hold communication with sir Robert Wilson, who had been at the latter town since the 23d. But a great and signal crisis was at hand, the full importance of which cannot be well understood without an exact knowledge of the situation and proceedings of all the armies involved in this complicated campaign. The 30th of June, Soult, when at Zamora, received a despatch from the emperor, dated near Ratisbon, conferring on him the supreme command of the second, fifth, and sixth corps, with orders to concentrate them, and act decisively against the English. “_Wellesley_,” said Napoleon, “_will probably advance, by the Tagus, against Madrid: in that case, pass the mountains, fall on his flank and rear, and crush him_;” for, at that distance, and without other information than what his own sagacity supplied, this allknowing soldier foresaw the leading operations even as soon and as certainly as those who projected them.