The annals of warfare often tell us that in all actions there is one critical and decisive moment which will give the victory to the general who knows how to discover and secure it. When the guards first made their rash charge, Sir Arthur Wellesley, foreseeing the issue of it, had ordered the 48th down from the hill, although a rough battle was going on there, and at the same time he ordered Cotton’s light cavalry to advance. These dispositions gained the day. The French relaxed their efforts by degrees; the fire of the English grew hotter, and their loud and confident shouts, sure augury of success, were heard along the whole line. The French army soon after retired to the position 80from whence it had descended to the attack. This retrograde movement was covered by skirmishers, and increasing fire of artillery; and the British, reduced to less than fourteen thousand men, and exhausted by toil and want of food, were unable to pursue. The battle was scarcely over when the dry grass and shrubs taking fire, a volume of flame passed with inconceivable rapidity across a part of the field, scorching in its course both the dead and wounded. The loss of the British in the course of this severe action and previous skirmishing was upwards of six thousand men killed and wounded. That of the French, as afterwards appeared in a manuscript of Marshal Jourdan, was rather more than seven thousand three hundred. The following morning presented a choice of disagreeables. Having taken a position along the battlefield somewhat in advance of the British line, we were surrounded with the dying and the dead. The number of the latter was hourly increasing. Combatants who had mingled in the fray, belonging to either army, lay intermingled in frightful heaps. Many of the bodies, though exposed only for so short a time to the sun’s rays, were offensively putrid and discoloured, so that interment without ceremony or distinction became necessary for the safety of the living. Meantime provisions were scanty, the water we had to drink was stagnant, the heat of the weather increased, and the enemy was hastily concentrating in great force in the vicinity. The 30th of July was passed by Sir Arthur in establishing hospitals at Talavera, and in fruitless endeavours to procure food, and the help required to keep the wounded men from perishing. On this occasion the Spanish behaved infamously. Not an inhabitant, although possessing ample means, would render the slightest aid, nor even assist to bury the dead. The corn secreted in Talavera alone was sufficient to support the army for a month; but the troops were starving, although the inhabitants, who 81had fled across the Tagus with their portable effects at the beginning of the battle, had returned. This conduct left an indelible impression on the minds of the English soldiers. From that period their contempt and dislike of the Spaniards were never effaced. The principal motive in war