On the night of the 2d August, letters were received from Wilson, announcing the appearance of the French near Nombella, whither he, unconscious of the effect produced by his presence at Escalona, had retreated with his infantry, sending his artillery to St. Roman, near Talavera. As sir Arthur Wellesley could not suppose that sir Robert Wilson’s corps alone would cause the first corps to retire, he naturally concluded that Victor’s design was to cross the Alberche at Escalona, crush Wilson, and operate a communication with Soult by the valley of the Tietar. As such a movement, if persisted in, would necessarily dislodge Cuesta from Talavera, sir Arthur, before he commenced his march, obtained the Spanish general’s promise that he would collect cars, for the purpose of transporting as many of the English wounded as were in a condition to be moved, from Talavera, to some more suitable place. This promise, like all the others, was shamefully violated; but the British general had not yet learned the full extent of Cuesta’s bad faith, and thinking that a few days would suffice to drive back Soult, marched, on the 3d of August, with seventeen thousand men, to Oropesa, intending to unite with Bassecour’s division, and to fight Soult, whose force he estimated at fifteen thousand. [Sidenote: S. Journal of Operations 2d corps, MS.] Meanwhile, Soult being, by the return of general Foy, on the 24th of July, assured of the king’s concurrence in the combined movements to be executed, ordered Laborde, Merle, and La Houssaye to march from Zamora and Toro upon Salamanca and Ledesma, and to scour the banks of the Tormes. The sixth corps was also directed upon the same place; and, the 25th, Soult repaired to Salamanca in person, intending to unite the three corps there. Hearing, however, of Victor’s retrograde movement from the Alberche to the Guadarama, he desired marshal Mortier to march, on the 28th, to Plasencia, by Fuente Roble and Bejar, and he placed La Houssaye’s and Lorge’s dragoons under his command: the remainder of the second corps and the light cavalry were to follow when the sixth corps should be in motion. This done, Soult wrote to the king, saying, “_My urgent desire is that your majesty may not fight a general battle before you are certain of the concentration of all my forces near Plasencia. The most important results will be obtained if your majesty will abstain from attacking until the moment when a knowledge of my march causes the enemy to retrace his steps, which he must do, or he is lost._” The 29th, the fifth corps was at Fuente Roble; but information being received that Beresford, with an army, had reached Almeida on the 27th, the march was covered by strong detachments on the side of Ciudad Rodrigo. The long-expected convoy of artillery and ammunition for the second corps had, however, arrived in Salamanca the 29th; and Ney wrote, from Toro, that he also would be there the 31st.