Meanwhile, the first corps, passing the Tagus by a ford, had re-established the bridge at Villa Maurique before ten o’clock in the morning, and finding Santa Cruz de la Zarza abandoned, followed Areizaga’s traces; at Villatobas, the light cavalry captured twelve hundred carriages, and a little farther on, took a thousand prisoners, from the column which was making for Tarancon. Thus informed of the result of the battle, the duke of Belluno halted at Villatobas, but sent his cavalry forward. At La Guardia they joined Sebastiani’s horsemen; and the whole continuing the pursuit to Lillo, made five hundred more prisoners, together with three hundred horses. This finished the operations of the day: only eighteen hundred cannon-shot had been fired, and an army of more than fifty thousand men had been ruined. The French lost seventeen hundred men, killed and wounded; the Spaniards five thousand: and, before nightfall, all the baggage and military carriages, three thousand animals, forty-five pieces of artillery, thirty thousand muskets, and twenty-six thousand captives were in the hands of the conquerors! [Illustration: _Vol. 3, Plate 3._ AREIZAGA’S Operations, 1809. _Published by T. & W. Boone 1830._] [Sidenote: Letter from Lord Wellington to Lord Liverpool, Nov. 30, 1809. MSS.] Areizaga reached Tembleque during the night, and La Carolina the third day after. On the road, he met general Benaz with a thousand dragoons that had been detached to the rear before the battle commenced; this body he directed on Madrilegos to cover the retreat of the fugitives; but so strongly did the panic spread that when Sebastiani approached that post on the 20th, Benaz’s men fled, without seeing an enemy, as fearfully as any who came from the fight. Even so late as the 24th, only four hundred cavalry, belonging to all regiments, could be assembled at Manzanares; and still fewer at La Carolina. CHAPTER VI. Joseph halted at Dos Barrios, the night of the battle, and the next day directed Sebastiani, with all the light cavalry and a division of infantry, upon Madrilegos and Consuegra; the first corps, by St. Juan de Vilharta, upon the Sierra Morena, and the fifth corps, by Tembleque and Mora, upon Toledo. One division of the fourth corps guarded the spoil and the prisoners at Ocaña. A second division, reinforced with a brigade of cavalry, was posted, by detachments, from Aranjuez to Consuegra. The monarch himself, with his guards and Dessolle’s first brigade, returned, on the 20th, to Madrid.