The victory of Talavera won for Wellesley the rank of viscount, to which he was raised on September 4, with the title of Wellington. Although the victory revived the respect of foreign nations for the prowess of British arms, it was otherwise fruitless, and its sequel was fairly open to criticism. Wellesley found that Soult, with Ney and Mortier, had circumvented him, and that he must retreat through Esdremadura, on the south of the Tagus, upon Badajoz. Cuesta, who had advocated bolder counsels, undertook to guard the rear, and to protect the British wounded at Talavera. But he soon found it necessary to abandon that position. Fifteen hundred of the wounded were left behind, and were humanely treated by the French generals. Wellesley's retreat over the mountains was attended with great hardship and loss, for want of supplies either from Spain or from the coast, and his long encampment in the malarious valley of the Guadiana about Badajoz swelled the number of his sick to a frightful extent. It was not until December, when it got into better cantonments on Portuguese soil, that the British army, triumphant at Talavera, recovered either its health or its _moral_. Napoleon boasted, in a memorandum to be inserted in the Paris journals, that Wellington had really been beaten in Spain, and that "if affairs there had been properly conducted not an Englishman would have escaped". Without going quite so far as this, the parliamentary opposition in England made the least of the victory and the most of the retreat, which unfortunately coincided in time with the wreck of the Walcheren expedition. Even Wellington's best friends in England began to lose heart, as did many of his own officers. He remained undaunted, and having established his headquarters on the high ground between the Tagus and the Douro, meditated designs which, slowly matured, bore good fruit in later years.