Arthur felt numbed by the sight that lay before him. Across the length of the ridge that had formed Beresford’s right flank, the trampled grass and rough heather was covered with the mottled flesh of the dead, still half clad in uniform after the looters had sated their appetite for the bloody harvest of the battlefield. He clicked his tongue and walked his horse on towards the point where the heaviest fighting had occurred. Here the bodies were heaped in places, possibly where some of the British battalions had been caught by the enemy’s lancers before they could form square. Small groups of men had clustered together to try to fight off the lancers before they were overwhelmed and cut down. Elsewhere, two long lines of men lay where they had been blasted by muskets and cannon. Arthur estimated that the best part of a battalion lay dead on the ground. Men who had held firm, steadily firing and reloading even as their comrades had been shot down either side of them, until they too were hit. Arthur regarded the scene with a great sadness weighing on his heart, but pride in these men too. They had served their country with unshakable dedication, and paid the supreme price.

The French had suffered grievously in turn, and small piles and rough lines of blue-coated bodies marked their position on the battlefield. Soult’s losses were even greater than Beresford’s, and it was the French marshal who had first baulked at the carnage being wrought in the thick banks of powder smoke drifting across the ridge. Soult had called off the attack and retreated back towards Madrid.

‘And Beresford calls this a victory?’ Somerset mused as he stared round the battlefield.

‘It is a victory of sorts. He fought off Soult and forced the French to give up their attempt to relieve Badajoz. However,’ Arthur paused and gestured towards the bodies littering the surrounding area,‘another such victory would ruin us.’

Beresford’s army was camped a short distance outside Elvas. The general had fallen back beyond Badajoz to give his men time to recover from their ordeal at Albuera. Only a token force remained outside Badajoz to continue the siege, digging a handful of approach trenches. The motley collection of cannon fired occasional shots at the sturdy defences of San Cristobal, the outlying fort that dominated Badajoz from the high ground on the far side of the Guadiana river. A distant tricolour rippled in lazy defiance above the walls of the fort.