Soult’s intention being to follow up this success, he directed that the first corps should move, in two columns, upon Guadalupe and Deleytoza, intending to support it with the second and fifth, while the sixth corps crossed at Almaraz, and seized the pass of Mirabete. This would undoubtedly have completed the ruin of the Spanish army, and forced sir Arthur to make a rapid and disastrous retreat; for so complete was the surprise and so sudden the overthrow that some of the English foragers also fell into the hands of the enemy; and that Cuesta’s army was in no condition to have made any resistance, if the pursuit had been continued with vigour, is clear, from the following facts:-- 1º. When he withdrew his main body from the bridge of Arzobispo to Peralada de Garbin, on the 7th, he left fifteen pieces of artillery by the road-side, without a guard. The defeat of Albuquerque placed these guns at the mercy of the enemy, who were, however, ignorant of their situation, until a trumpeter attending an English flag of truce, either treacherously or foolishly, mentioned it in the French camp, from whence a detachment of cavalry was sent to fetch them off. 2º. The British military agent, placed at the Spanish head-quarters, was kept in ignorance of the action; and it was only by the arrival of the duke of Albuquerque, at Deleytoza, on the evening of the 9th, that sir Arthur Wellesley knew the bridge was lost. He had before advised Cuesta to withdraw behind the Ibor river, and even now contemplated a partial attack to keep the enemy in check; but when he repaired in person to that general’s quarter, on the 10th, he found the country covered with fugitives and stragglers, and Cuesta as helpless and yet as haughty as ever. All his ammunition and guns (forty pieces) were at the right bank of the Ibor, and, of course, at the foot of the Meza, and within sight and cannon-shot of the enemy, on the right bank of the Tagus. They would have been taken by the first French patroles that approached, but that sir Arthur Wellesley persuaded the Spanish staff-officers to have them dragged up the hill, in the course of the 10th, without Cuesta’s knowledge.