over to the quartermaster; and in a few minutes over
an hour from the receipt of the order, the two battalions were in
motion.

After a twenty-mile march, they halted for the night near the
frontier. An hour later they were joined by twenty troopers of a
Portuguese regiment, under the command of a subaltern.

The next day they marched through Plasencia, and halted for the
night on the slopes of the Sierra. An orderly was despatched, next
morning, to the officer in command of any force that there might be
at Banos, informing him of the position that they had taken up.

Terence ordered two companies to remain at this spot, which was at
the head of a little stream running down into an affluent of the
Tagus; their position being now nearly due north of Almaraz, from
which they were distant some twenty miles. The rest of the force
descended into the plain, and took post at various villages between
the Sierra and Oropesa, the most advanced party halting four miles
from that town.

The French forces under Victor had, in accordance with orders from
Madrid, fallen back from Plasencia a week before, and taken up his
quarters at Talavera.

At the time when the regiment received its uniforms, Terence had
ordered that twenty suits of the men's peasant clothes should be
retained in store and, specially intelligent men being chosen,
twenty of these were sent forward towards the river Alberche, to
discover Victor's position. They brought in news that he had placed
his troops behind the river, and that Cuesta, who had at one time
an advanced guard at Oropesa, had recalled it to Almaraz. Parties
of Victor's cavalry were patrolling the country between Talavera
and Oropesa.

Terence had sent Bull, with five hundred men, to occupy all the
passes across the Sierras, with orders to capture any orderlies or
messengers who might come along; and a day later four men brought
in a French officer, who had been captured on the road leading
south. He was the bearer of a letter from Soult to the king, and
was at once sent, under the escort of four troopers, to
headquarters.

The men who had brought in the officer reported that they had
learned that Wilson, with his command of four thousand men, was in
the mountains north of the Escurial; and that spies from that
officer had ascertained that there was great alarm in Madrid, where
the news of the British advance towards Plasencia was already
known; and that it was feared that this force, with