At Talavera, sir Arthur Wellesley had been forced to give over to the Spaniards the artillery taken from the enemy. At Meza d’Ibor, he had sacrificed a part of his ammunition, to obtain conveyance for the wounded men, and to effect the present movement from Jaraicejo, without leaving his sick behind, he was obliged to abandon all his parc of ammunition, and stores, and then the Spanish generals, who had refused the slightest aid to convey the sick and wounded men, immediately found ample means to carry off all these stores to their own magazines. In this manner, almost bereft of baggage and ammunition, those soldiers, who had withstood the fiercest efforts of the enemy, were driven, as it were, ignominiously from the country they had protected to their loss. The 24th, the head-quarters being at Merida, a despatch from lord Wellesley was received. He painted in strong colours the terror of the junta, the distraction of the people, and the universal confusion; and with a natural anxiety to mitigate their distress, he proposed that the British army should, notwithstanding the past, endeavour to cover Andalusia, by taking, in conjunction with the Spanish army, a defensive post behind the Guadiana, in such manner that the left should rest on the frontier of Portugal: to facilitate this he had, he said, presented a plan to the junta for the future supply of provisions, and the vicinity of the frontier and of Seville would, he hoped, obviate any difficulty on that point. But he rested his project entirely upon political grounds; and it is worthy of observation that he who, for many years had, with despotic power, controlled the movements of immense armies in India, carefully avoided any appearance of meddling with the general’s province. “I am,” said he, “fully sensible not only of the _indelicacy_, but of the inutility of attempting to offer to you any opinion of mine in a situation where your own judgement must be your best guide.”--“Viewing, however, so nearly, the painful consequences of your immediate retreat into Portugal, I have deemed it to be my duty to submit it to your consideration the possibility of adopting an intermediate plan.”