Probably the severe check which Massena's army had received at Busaco, had rendered him and his état-major more cautious than Napoleon's officers were reported to be; but could any thing have possibly been more surprising, than after they had found out the strength of the lines of Torres Vedras to be so great as to deter them from venturing an attack, that they should have remained a single day, much less a whole winter in front of them, exposing their fine army to the ruinous Fabian system adopted by Lord Wellington, who by the steady and composed front he displayed, whilst the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo was going forward, and by the lesson he gave them at Busaco, must have told them plainly enough what they were to expect. Surely Massena, his generals, and état-major should have come to the conclusion, either to attack, at all hazards, these lines, or that they ought instantly to have made arrangements for falling back into Spain upon their resources, which they very likely might have been able to do undisturbed by us, from the melancholy state in which Portugal then was. Had the two armies changed positions, and I think I am fully borne out in what I am going to assert by the line of proceeding adopted by Lord Wellington at the Nivelle and at Toulouse, I have no doubt but he would have attacked Massena, and carried the lines of Torres Vedras, strong as they were represented to be. Some points in such intrenched, or fortified positions, may always be carried by concentrated attacks of brave and ably directed troops, like the British and French, when generally the whole of the defences, constructed probably at great expense and labour, must be abandoned, and at all events an attack, if even unsuccessful, could not have been so disastrous to the French as the effects of want of cover, a short allowance of unwholesome food, naturally producing diseases and causing many deaths amongst them, all of which they experienced during the winter, miserably and uselessly spent by them before the lines of Torres Vedras, and in their ultimate retreat from Portugal, when the whole of the country, north of the Tagus, was completely, imprudently, but unavoidably laid waste; thereby proclaiming to the world, that the idea of attacking the Duke of Wellington there, at any future period, had been abandoned.