Note 558 — Chapter I

Wellesley writes in commenting on this plan [Wellington Dispatches, iv. 402]: ‘At all events these two detachments on the two flanks appear to me to be too weak to produce any great effect upon the movements of Victor.... I think it would be nearly certain that the Marshal would be able to defend the passage [of the Tagus] with a part only of his force, while with the other part he would beat one or both of the detachments sent round his flank. Indeed the detachment which should have been sent from La Serena toward Talavera, being between the corps of Victor and Sebastiani, could hardly escape.’ Wellesley also points out that it is useless to expect that Victor would wait in his present cantonments: at the first news of the approach of the British army he will retire to Almaraz and Arzobispo.