The heavy cavalry, meantime, had been halted two miles off, and there only remained with General Long three squadrons of Portugueze with which to harass and impede the French infantry, till it could be brought up: these Portugueze did not stand the fire of the column and the appearance of the hussars; and though they were soon rallied, the retreating column gained ground considerably before the heavy cavalry could overtake them. The 13th and the two Portugueze squadrons were then perceived returning from the pursuit which they had followed with such heedless precipitation, as to have given the enemy the superiority of numbers, and to have lost twenty-four killed, seventy wounded, and seventy-seven prisoners: some of them had pushed on to the very gate of Badajoz, and were taken on the bridge. Marshal Beresford would not risk the loss of more cavalry, and the enemy’s column therefore retired unmolested, retaking fifteen out of sixteen guns which our 13th had taken. The loss of the French was very considerable; in one of their regiments only six officers out of sixteen remained for duty. The next morning a French captain of dragoons came with a trumpet, demanding permission to search the field for his colonel. Several of our officers went out with him. The peasants had stripped the dead during the night; and more than six hundred naked bodies were lying on the ground, mostly slain with sabre wounds. It was long before they could find Chamorin, lying on his face in his clotted blood: as soon as the body was turned up, the French captain gave a sort of scream, sprung off his horse, threw off his brazen helmet, and kneeling by the body, took the lifeless hand, and kissed it repeatedly with a passionate grief which affected all the beholders.
After this affair Beresford cantoned his troops at Campo Mayor, Elvas, Borba, and Villa-Viçosa: they were equally in need of rest and of refitment, great part of the British infantry having made forced marches from Condeixa, and being in want of shoes. General Ballasteros, who was seldom at any time in force without suffering defeat, and never defeated without presently obtaining some success, after experiencing some of these customary alternations, and incurring some severe losses in the Condado de Niebla, had fallen back upon Gibraleon, hoping to effect a junction with Zayas, who had been sent from Cadiz with 6000 men, of whom 400 were cavalry. Something was always to be expected from Ballasteros’s remarkable activity; but there was equal reason for dreading the effect of his incaution: by Beresford’s request, therefore, Castaños wrote to desire that he and Zayas would not commit themselves, but reserve their force entire for co-operating with him. Beresford’s objects at this time were, to throw a bridge across the Guadiana at Jurumenha, ... to recover Olivença, drive Mortier out of Extremadura, and form as soon as possible the siege of Badajoz. Foreseeing the want of a bridge, Lord Wellington had frequently, before the fall of that place, urged the Spanish general officers to remove the bridge-boats, and other ♦APRIL.♦ materials which were in store there, to Elvas. They began to follow this advice, but so late and so slowly, that only five of the twenty boats had been removed, when Mendizabal’s defeat rendered any further removal impossible: these, when laid down, left 160 yards of the river uncovered. Nor was this the only difficulty. It had been supposed that ample supplies had been collected at Estremoz and Villa Viçosa; but owing to the poverty of the Government, and to that mismanagement which, from the highest to the lowest of its departments, prevailed and was maintained, as if by prescriptive right, throughout, not enough were found to ensure the subsistence of the troops from day to day. Moreover, there were no shoes in store for an army which had marched itself barefoot. And had there been no deficiency of stores, and no previous difficulties to overcome, Beresford’s force, consisting of 20,000 effective men, British and Portugueze, was inadequate to the operations which he was to undertake with it, though it was the utmost that Lord Wellington could spare from the more immediately important scene of action on the frontier of Beira.