I ought, probably, on the 16th of July, to have determined to suspend all operations till the army should be supplied with the means required; but having, on the 11th of July, settled with general Cuesta a plan of operations to be carried into execution by the armies under the command of general Venegas, general Cuesta, and myself, respectively, I did not think it proper to disappoint general Cuesta. I believed that general Venegas would have carried into execution that part of the plan of operations allotted to his army, although I was afterwards disappointed in that expectation; and I preferred that the British army should suffer inconvenience than that general Venegas’s corps should be exposed alone to the attack of the enemy; and, above all, I was induced to hope that I should be supplied. Accordingly, I marched, on the 18th of July, from Plasencia, the soldiers carrying on their backs their provisions to the 21st, on which day a junction was formed with general Cuesta’s army; and, from that day to the 24th of August, the troops or their horses did not receive one regular ration. The irregularity and deficiency, both in quality and quantity, were so great that I considered it a matter of justice to the troops to remit to them, during that period, half of the sum usually stopped from their pay for rations. The forage for the horses was picked up for them by their riders wherever they could find it, and was generally wheat or rye, which are considered unwholesome food; and the consequence was that, exclusive of the loss by engaging with the enemy, the army lost, in the short period of five weeks, not less than one thousand five hundred horses. I have no knowledge of what passed between general Cuesta and don Lozano des Torres and the intendant of provisions of the Spanish army. I never saw the latter gentleman excepting twice; the first time on the 22d of July, when he waited upon me to claim, for the Spanish army, sixteen thousand rations of bread which had been brought into Talavera, and had been sent to my quarters, and which were delivered over to him, notwithstanding that the British troops were in want; and the second time, on the 25th of July, when he waited upon me, also at Talavera, to desire that the ovens of that town might be delivered over for the use of the Spanish army, they having moved to St. Ollalla, and the British army being still at Talavera. This request, which was not complied with, is an example of the preference which was given to the British troops while they were in Spain.