Note 313 — SECTION XXXII: CHAPTER V

Wellington to V. Alten, April 18, ‘You were desired “not to be in a hurry,” to give them (España and General Baccelar) your countenance so far as might be in your power, and to tell them that you were left in the front for a particular object.... I beg you to observe that if you had assembled the 1st Hussars at Pastores on March 30 and April 1, the Agueda being then scarcely fordable for cavalry, you could have kept open the communications between Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo.... You wrote on the seventh from Castello Branco that you knew nothing about the enemy! and instead of receiving from you (as I had expected) a daily account of their operations, you knew nothing, and, from the way in which you made your march, all those were driven off the road who might have given me intelligence, and were destined to keep up the communication between me and Carlos de España.’