These forts and the bridge-head were armed with eighteen guns and garrisoned with eleven hundred men, which insured command of the river; but the mountains on the left bank precluded the passage of an army towards Lower Estremadura, save by the royal road to Truxillo, which, five miles from the Tagus, went over the lofty rugged Mirabete ridge: to secure the summit of this, the French had drawn a line of works across the throat of the pass; that is to say, a large fortified house was connected by smaller posts with the ancient watch-tower of Mirabete, which contained eight guns and was surrounded by a rampart twelve feet high.
If all these works, and a road, which Marmont, following the traces of an ancient Roman way, was now opening across the Gredos mountains had been finished, the communication of the French, though circuitous, would have been very good and secure. Wellington feared that accomplishment and designed to surprise Almaraz previous to the siege of Badajos, when the redoubts were far from complete; but the Portuguese government then baffled him by neglecting to furnish the means of transporting the artillery from Lisbon. Hill now marched to attempt it with a force of six thousand men, including four hundred cavalry, two field brigades of artillery, a pontoon equipage, and a battering-train of six iron twenty-four-pound howitzers. The enterprise was become more difficult. For when the army was round Badajos, only the resistance of the forts was to be looked to; now Foy’s division of Marmont’s army was in the valley of the Tagus, and troops from the king’s army occupied Talavera. Drouet was also with eight or nine thousand men near Medellin, and closer to Merida than Hill was to Almaraz; he might therefore intercept the latter’s retreat--and the king’s orders were imperative that he should hang on the English force in Estremadura. Hill had therefore to steer, going and coming, through all these forces with an unwieldy convoy, and as it were, blot out the strong place without a battle; but Wellington took many precautions to divert the French attention to other points, and to furnish support without indicating the true object.
Hill, though dangerously delayed by the difficulty of restoring the bridge of Merida, which he had himself destroyed during the siege of Badajos, crossed the Guadiana with six thousand men, twelve field-pieces, pontoons, battering-train and fifty country carts, conveying material and ammunition. On the 15th he reached Truxillo, and during his march the guerillas of the Guadalupe mountains made demonstrations at different points, between Almaraz and Arzobispo, as if seeking a place to cast a bridge that he might join Wellington. Foy was deceived by these feints, for his spies at Truxillo, while reporting the passage of the Guadiana, said Hill had fifteen thousand men, and that two brigades of cavalry were following: one report even stated that thirty thousand men had entered Truxillo, whereas there were less than six thousand of all arms.