Margaron’s cavalry was practically intact: on July 15 it was 2,151 strong (Thiébault); it hardly suffered in the insurrection. If we allow 300 men for casual losses and troopers on detachment or acting as orderlies, it is ample 1,851 We must add the 100 volunteer horse 100 Lastly, for artillerymen of four batteries (23 guns), engineers and train, &c., we allow 700 ------ Total 13,056 This is not far from Wellesley’s estimate of 14,000 men. Hearing that Wellesley was stationary in Vimiero since the morning of the nineteenth, Junot determined to attack him at the earliest possible moment. He was ignorant that his adversary’s halt was due to the arrival of Anstruther and Acland, but knowing that more troops were expected from the sea he resolved to fight at once. The reserve and convoy joined him on the morning of the twentieth: the same night he marched under cover of the darkness and traversed the ten miles which separated him from the hostile position: at dawn he was close under it. But Wellesley meanwhile had received his reinforcements, and was 4,000 men stronger than the Duke of Abrantes supposed. On the nineteenth Anstruther’s[218] brigade had accomplished its dangerous disembarkation, through the surf that beats upon the sandy shore north of the mouth of the Maceira. It had been a tedious business, many boats having been upset and some lives lost. On the afternoon of the twentieth the convoy that brought Acland’s brigade was got inshore, and the greater part of the men disembarked in the dusk in the actual mouth of the little river, and slept upon the beach. But some of them were still on shipboard on the morning of the twenty-first, and came too late for the battle of that day[219]. [218] Anstruther’s Brigade from Ramsgate consisted of-- 9th Regiment (2nd batt.) 633 43rd ” ” 721 52nd ” ” 654 97th ” 695 ----- 2,703 With them the 43rd and 52nd, so famous in many a Peninsular battle-field in the Light Division, made their appearance. [219] Of Acland’s Brigade from Harwich there disembarked-- 2nd or Queen’s Regiment 731 20th Regiment (seven and a half companies) 401 95th Rifles (1st batt., two companies) 200 ----- 1,332 The ship that bore Colonel Ross and two and a half companies of the 20th had drifted so far off the shore that it did not succeed in getting its freight delivered till late on the twenty-first.