Cameron struggled to contain his anxiety and nodded. As they passed through the farm Arthur noted that the fire in the yard between the buildings was fringed by the charred remains of other equipment: the spokes and timbers of a gun carriage, and what looked like the carcass of a horse, or a mule. Further on they came across a deserted camp site. Flattened grass gave way to latrine ditches and then a broad expanse of muddy ground, churned up by nailed boots, horseshoes and heavy iron-rimmed wheels. There were the remains of more fires where the remnants of equipment and looted furniture still smouldered.

Arthur turned to Cameron. ‘I’ve seen enough. Masséna is retreating. There’s no question of it.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Cameron paused a moment before he continued.‘What will you do, sir?’

‘I shall pursue him. I shall outmarch him and then, by God, I will destroy him.’

Marshal Masséna had gained over a day’s march by the time Arthur’s army took up the pursuit. The cavalry raced on ahead of the main column, tracking the line of retreat. The passage of the French army was not difficult to trace since they had left a now familiar trail of abandoned equipment and small bands of stragglers and wounded eagerly waiting to be taken into captivity rather than face the wrath of the local peasants. Further on the allied army came across the first of the villages devastated by the retreating French. Everything of value that could be carried away had been stripped from the houses. All the food was gone. Mutilated bodies lay sprawled in the streets. Three blackened bodies, a woman and two children, still hung from a tree over the remains of the fire that had been lit beneath them. The only survivor, an old man, bleakly informed Arthur that the dead had been tortured by the French in an attempt to discover any hidden supplies of food.

Thereafter the Portuguese battalions stopped taking French prisoners, and their British officers stood by in silence as the enemy’s throats were cut and their bodies left for the buzzards.

As the pursuit continued both armies crossed the frontier. Ahead lay the fortress town of Salamanca, where Masséna would be safe from his pursuers. That night, Arthur and Somerset rode to a small hill and surveyed the twinkling fires of the enemy sprawling across the rolling landscape half a day’s march to the east.

‘Frustrating, is it not?’ Arthur muttered as he stared towards the enemy. ‘To have chased them so far, but not quickly enough to force them to turn and fight.’

‘I suppose so, sir,’ Somerset replied. ‘But Masséna’s army is a spent force. It is a victory all the same.’