the enemy to loose their hold on those provinces and
concentrate to save the capital. And before they fully effected their
concentration, he gave battle to King Joseph and Marshals Jourdan and
Victor at Talavera (July 28th). Skilfully posting the Spaniards behind
intrenchments and in gardens where their raw levies could fight with
every advantage, he extended his thin red lines--he had only 17,000
British troops--along a ridge stretching up to a plateau that
dominated the broken ground north of the town. On that hill Wellesley
planted his left: and all the efforts of Victor to turn that wing or
to break it by charges across the intervening ravine were bloodily
beaten off.

The fierce heat served but to kindle French and British to greater
fury. Finally, the dashing charge of our 23rd dragoons and the
irresistible advance of the 48th regiment of foot overthrew the
enemy's centre; and as the day waned, the 30,000 French retired, with
a loss of 17 cannon and of 7,000 men in killed, wounded, and
prisoners. Had the other Spanish armies now offered the support which
Wellesley expected, he would doubtless have seized Madrid. He had
written three days before Talavera: "With or without a battle we shall
be at Madrid soon." But his allies now failed him utterly: they did
not hold the mountain passes which confronted Soult in his march from
Salamanca into the valley of the Tagus; and they left the British
forces half starving.--"We are here worse off than in a hostile
country," wrote our commander; "never was an army so ill used: we had
no assistance from the Spanish army: we were obliged to unload our
ammunition and our treasure in order to employ the cars in the removal
of our sick and wounded." Meanwhile Soult, with 50,000 men, was
threading his way easily through the mountains and threatened to cut
us off from Portugal: but by a rapid retreat Wellesley saved his army,
vowing that he would never again trust Spanish offers of help.[214]

Far more dispiriting was the news that reached the Austrian
negotiators from the North Sea. There the British Government succeeded
in eclipsing all its former achievements in forewarning foes and
disgusting its friends. Very early in the year, the men of Downing
Street knew that Austria was preparing to fight Napoleon and built her
hopes of success, partly on the Peninsular War, partly on a British
descent in Hanover, where everything was ripe for revolution.
Unfortunately, we were still, form