“But there was a more shameful consideration, namely, the constant and shameful misbehaviour of the Spanish troops before the enemy. We in England never hear of their defeats and flights, but I have heard Spanish officers telling of nineteen or twenty actions of the description of that at the bridge of Arzobispo, accounts of which, I believe, have never been published. * * * In the battle of Talavera, in which the Spanish army, with very trifling exception, was not engaged--whole corps threw away their arms, and ran off, when they were neither attacked nor threatened with an attack. When these dastardly soldiers run away, they plunder everything they meet. In their flight from Talavera they plundered the baggage of the British army, which was at that moment bravely engaged in their cause.” When Wellington came to this resolution to retire into Portugal, he was at the head of only 17,000 British troops of all arms; the “terror-stricken Spaniards” were literally an incumbrance. (Napier, _Hist. W. P._ b. viii. c. 5.) Our troops, through the faithlessness of their allies, were almost starving, and they were confronted by 70,000 French! The wonder is that they were not utterly and immediately crushed by the latter. But Soult was the only great General then amongst the French commanders; and the promptness is as much to be admired as the prudence with which Wellington retired into Portugal. The Spanish army made some miserable attempts after this at independent action against the French, which ended four months after the battle of Talavera in the disastrous battle of Ocaña, one of the most frightful routs recorded in history, where the whole Spanish army of more than 50,000 men was destroyed, having 5000 killed and wounded, and leaving 26,000 prisoners, 45 pieces of artillery, 30,000 muskets, and 3000 horses and beasts of burden in the hands of the enemy! The French lost but 1700 men, killed and wounded; and I must do them the justice of saying that no exploit of ours in the Peninsula equalled this in its numerical results; for God forbid that I should obscure the glory of an enemy or gloss over the misconduct of an ally. The rest of the Spanish army was subsequently defeated at Alba de Tormes, which closed the campaigns of 1809.