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escaped, they did so without cohesion and with no imm ediate hope of being able to re form as a fighting force. As Foy, the commander of the only undamaged division, confided to his diary, the catastrophe of the Spanish war had come. With the Army of Portugal's rout the balance of Napoleon's dispositions in the Peninsula had been destroyed. So had the legend of French invincibility. Suffering 15,000 casualties to Wellington's 5000, the French left in his hands two eagles, six colours, twenty guns and 7000 prisoners. Their Commander-in-Chief and four divisional commanders were among the casualties. The battle, Foy thought, raised Wellington almost to the level of Marlborough. "Hitherto," he wrote, "we had been aware of his prudence, his eye for choosing a position, and his skill in utilising it. At Salamanca he has shown himself a great and able master of manoeuvre. He kept his dispositions concealed for almost the whole day; he waited till we were committed to our movement before he developed his own. ... He fought in the oblique order—
    1 Two British regiments, the nth and 6ist, lost 340 out of 516 and 366 out of 546 men. Oman, V, 462.
    it was a battle in the style of Frederick the Great." 1 Not since the victor of Blenheim supped with two captive Marshals of France in his coach had a British army won such glory.
    Wellington's pursuit was not the spectacular affair that followed Napoleon's victories. He had only 3000 cavalry; his tired men had fought three major engagements in six months, and many of his regiments were gravely depleted. Sweeping gestures and risks were beyond his means. Apart from his German, Portuguese and Spanish auxiliaries, he had still less than 40,000 troops in the Peninsula. Unlike N apo leon he co uld not look to conscriptions to fill his ranks; he was the servant of a parsirnonious Parliament. And there were still four other French armies in Spain.
    Except for two regiments of Fo y's rearguard, who were annihi lated in square by a brilliant charge of German cavalry on the day af ter the battle, the retreating French received little injury from their pursuers. They moved too fast for them. The British commander was more concerned to feed his advancing columns and to prevent King Joseph's army from Mad rid from joining and rallying Cla usel's fugitives.
    Only when he learnt that Joseph was Withdrawing again across the Guadarramas, did Wellington push on to Valladolid where he took a no ther 17 guns -and 800 sick on the 29th. Here he waited a week till he was satisfied that the shattered Army of Portugal, falling back on-Burgos, was not ! being reinforced by Caffarelh's Army of the North. Then, finding ^hat ; the latter was fully occupied by Popham's coastal operations, he turned his face to the south. On August 5 th, a fortnight after Salamanca, leaving Clinton with the 6th-Division to watch Clausel, he marched with 36,000 troops to Segovia and Madrid. His resolution was reached after learning that the British expedition from Sicily had arrived after all on-the Mediterranean coast. Reckoning that this would keep Suchet from reinforcing his co lleagues, he decided to seize the Spanish capital before Soult's 45,000 troops from Andalusia could come to the rescue of Joseph's outnumbered Army of the Centre. For its liberation would
    1 The sources used for the account of the battle are Oman, V, 418-74; Fortescue, VIII, 480-98; Wellington's Dispatches; Napier, Book XVIII, Ch. iii; Colonel A. H. Burne's The Art of War on Land; Foy; Gomm, 272-80; Dickson Papers, II, 685-97; Granville, II, 437, 450; Simmons, 241-2; Grattaiv238-6o; Granville, I, 75; -Vere,3i-7; Tomkinson, 168-89; Lynedoch, 2a6 -7;-Leith Hay„ II, 46-58.
    not only hearten the Spaniards, stiffen the Russians in their resistance and suggest to a restless Europe that French power was on the wane, but would give the British the advantage of interior lines in any future operations against Soult. With the whole Tagus valley and both ends of the