“_The battle of Talavera was the hardest fought of modern times._”
The potentialities of the new project were distinctly promising. After uniting with Cuesta, Wellesley was to follow the course of the Tagus and cut off Victor’s army of 33,000 troops while the attention of Sebastiani and Joseph Bonaparte, who had but 17,000 men all told, was occupied by Venegas.
When last heard of Soult and Ney were in Galicia busily engaged in suppressing an insurrection, so no opposition was anticipated from them. In this matter after events proved the facts to be far different from the surmise. There seemed every likelihood of a successful issue provided there was no snapping of individual links of the chain of operations. Wellesley did not find Cuesta a particularly affable colleague, but he was not the man to assert his own opinion unless he thought it imperative. He characterized him as having “no military genius,” which is certainly more favourable than “that deformed-looking lump of pride, ignorance, and treachery,” which is the description given to us by Costello. “He was,” the latter adds, “the most murderous-looking old man I ever saw.” They came together at Oropesa on the 20th July, their forces totalling 55,000, of which 35,000 were Spanish. It was the task of Venegas and his 26,000 men to approach Madrid from the south, and, by a demonstration in force, distract the attention of Sebastiani. He proved far too slow, and ere he was able to interfere, Victor, Sebastiani, and Joseph concentrated in the neighbourhood of Toledo. On the 26th July the last batch of their 50,000 troops came together.
Had Wellesley been allowed to attack on the 23rd July, as he wished, it is probable that he would have crushed Victor, whose reinforcements did not begin to arrive until the following day. Cuesta had already shown his incompetency, and some of his advanced guard had been roughly handled by a French cavalry division. It was Wellesley’s opinion that the psychological moment had arrived, but the Spanish commander objected. “Had we fought then,” Wellesley afterwards averred, “it would have been as great a battle as Waterloo, and would have cleared Spain of the French for that time.” The formidable task before him was not made lighter by the knowledge that the commissariat and transport arrangements had utterly broken down.