Meanwhile the king, who had regained Madrid, expecting to hear that ten thousand of the army of the south were at Toledo, received letters from Soult positively refusing to send that detachment; and from Clausel, saying that the army of Portugal was in full retreat to Burgos. This retreat he regarded as a breach of faith, because Clausel had promised to hold the line of the Duero if Wellington marched upon Madrid; but Joseph was unable to appreciate Wellington’s military combinations; he did not perceive, that, taking advantage of his central position, the English general, before he marched against Madrid, had forced Clausel to abandon the Duero to seek some safe and distant point to re-organize his army. Nor was the king’s perception of his own situation much clearer. He had the choice of several lines of operations; that is, he might defend the passes of the Guadarama while his court and enormous convoys evacuated Madrid and marched either upon Zaragoza, Valencia or Andalusia; or he might retire, army and convoy together, in one of those directions. Rejecting the defence of the passes, lest the allies should then march by their right to the Tagus, and so intercept his communication with the south, he resolved to direct his march towards the Morena, and he had from Segovia sent Soult orders to evacuate Andalusia and meet him on the frontier of La Mancha; but to avoid the disgrace of flying before a detachment, he occupied the Escurial mountain, and placed his army across the roads leading from the passes of the Guadarama to Madrid. While in this position Wellington’s advanced guard, composed of D’Urban’s Portuguese a troop of horse artillery and a battalion of infantry, passed the Guadarama, and the 10th the whole army was over the mountains. Then the king, retaining only eight thousand men in position, sent the rest of his troops to protect the march of his court, which quitted Madrid the same day, with two or three thousand carriages of different kinds and nearly twenty thousand persons of all ages and sexes.