The king, having fifty thousand veteran infantry, eight thousand cavalry and eighty-four pieces of artillery, came to drive the allies from Madrid. Soult and Jourdan acted under him, and the former first attacked General Cole at the Puente Largo, near Aranjuez on the Tagus; but though the English mines failed to destroy the bridge the French were vigorously repulsed. General Hill being thus menaced resolved to retreat by the Guadarama and join Wellington, whom he knew to be pressed by superior forces: he also thought the valley of the Tagus, although opened, could not furnish provisions for the French; but the commissary who had the care of that line had not removed the great magazines formed for the allies’ advance to Madrid: they were full, and Soult might have used them to interpose between Wellington and Portugal while Souham pressed him in retreat; yet neither he, nor Hill, nor Wellington, knew of their existence! Such is war.
Hill burned his pontoons and then causing the fort of the Retiro in Madrid to be blown up with all its stores, retreated by easy marches across the Guadarama, followed gently by the French; for Soult did not know his actual force, and, suspecting Wellington’s design to unite and fight a battle, moved cautiously. When near Arevalo, fresh orders, founded on new combinations, changed the direction of Hill’s march. Souham had repaired the bridge of Toro several days sooner than Wellington expected, and thus his design to join Hill on the Adaja and attack Soult was baffled; for Souham, possessing Toro and Tordesillas, could fall upon his rear; and he could not bring Hill up to attack Souham, because, having destroyed the bridges, he had no means to repass the Duero, and Soult moving by Fontiveros would reach the Tormes on his rear. His central position was therefore no longer available for offence or defence, and he directed Hill to gain Alba de Tormes at once by the road of Fontiveros. On the 6th of November he fell back himself to San Christoval, covering Salamanca.
Joseph, thinking to prevent Hill’s junction, had gained Arevalo by the Segovia road, and on the 8th, Souham’s scouts being met with at Medina del Campo, the king, for the first time since he had quitted Valencia, obtained news of the army of Portugal. One hundred thousand combatants, of which above twelve thousand were cavalry, with a hundred and thirty pieces of artillery, were then assembled on plains, over which, three months before, Marmont had marched with such confidence to his own destruction; and Soult, then expelled from Andalusia by Marmont’s defeat, was now, after having made half the circuit of the Peninsula, come to drive into Portugal that very army whose victory had driven him from the south. Wellington had foreseen, and foretold, that the acquisition of Andalusia, though politically important and useful, would prove injurious to himself at the moment. The prophecy was fulfilled. The French had concentrated a mighty power, from which it required both skill and fortune to escape. Meanwhile the Spanish armies let loose by this union of all the French troops kept aloof, or, coming to aid, were found a burden rather than a help.