After its failed Siege of Burgos, the 35,000-man Allied army withdrew to the west, pursued by Souham's 53,000 French soldiers.

Beginning on the 25th there were clashes at Palencia and Villamuriel de Cerrato as Souham sought to turn the Allied north flank.

The stalemate was broken on 29 October when a party of naked French soldiers swam the Duero River at Tordesillas with their weapons on a raft.

Though 80,000 French faced 65,000 Allies on the old Salamanca battlefield neither commander initiated a battle, whereupon Wellington began a withdrawal.

After a retreat in miserable conditions during which hundreds of soldiers were captured or died of hunger and exposure, the Allied army went into winter quarters.

On 22 July 1812, General Arthur Wellesley, Marquess Wellington's won a great victory over Marshal Auguste Marmont's Army of Portugal at the Battle of Salamanca.

[2] One major consequence of Salamanca was that Marshal Nicolas Soult raised the two and one-half year Siege of Cadiz on 25 August 1812 and abandoned the province of Andalusia.

The same day, the French cavalry fought Wellington's rear guard[8] in the drawn Battle of Venta del Pozo.

With his river defenses outflanked by Foy, Wellington ingeniously shifted his army to the east bank of the Pisuerga.

Surprised and attacked from an unexpected direction, the Brunswick officer and his men fled, allowing the French to capture the bridge along with nine prisoners, while suffering no losses.

[13] Soon afterward, Souham's pursuit slackened when General of Division Marie-François Auguste de Caffarelli du Falga reclaimed 12,000 Army of the North troops and returned to the Bay of Biscay coast to deal with a new outbreak of Spanish guerilla attacks.

[17] On 16 November at Matilla de los Caños del Río, Brigadier General Victor Alten with 1,300 men clashed with 2,000 French cavalry consisting of the 2nd Hussar, 5th and 27th Chasseurs à Cheval and 7th Lancer Regiments.

[18] Already demoralized by having to retreat, the Allied soldiers were soon forced to survive on acorns when the inept Quartermaster General James Willoughby Gordon directed the supply trains onto the wrong road.

The misery of the hungry foot soldiers was intense as they struggled to march on muddy roads in the cold weather.

Lieutenant General William Stewart and two others decided to disobey the army commander's direct order to retreat by a certain road.

The humor of the rank and file was not improved when Wellington issued a nasty letter to his division and brigade commanders and it was leaked to the press.

The French had been ejected from the cities of Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, Seville, and Astorga, and the provinces of Andalusia, Extremadura, and Asturias.