A glance at this order of battle shows that Wellesley expected to be attacked from the south, up the valley of the Maceira, and that he thought that the enemy’s plan would be to force his right-centre. Little or no provision is made against the plan which Junot actually adopted, that of assaulting the British left-centre and simultaneously turning their extreme left flank, while leaving the right unmolested. But the whole position was so short--it was less than three miles in length--that there was no difficulty in shifting troops rapidly from one end of it to the other, and, as the event showed, no risk whatever was run. Wellesley was busy arranging his line of battle, when to his bitter disappointment he received the news that he was superseded, a calamity which he had been expecting to occur at any moment. Sir Harry Burrard had arrived from England at the tail of Acland’s convoy, and was now on board the sloop _Brazen_ in Maceira Bay. Sir Arthur at once went off in a boat to greet him, and to give him an account of the condition in which affairs stood. Burrard heard him out, and then placed a strong embargo on any further offensive movement. He had learnt that Sir John Moore, with the division from the Baltic, was now off the Portuguese coast, and was resolved not to stir till those troops should have been landed. Being, as it seems, a leisurely sort of man, he resolved to sleep on board his ship for one night more, and to come ashore next morning--a resolve which cost him that chance of commanding a British army in a pitched battle which so many generals have in vain desired. Wellesley went back through the surf charged, for a short fifteen hours more, with the destinies of the army of Portugal[220]. [220] It may be well to give Wellesley’s army at Vimiero:-- Cavalry, 20th Light Dragoons 240 Artillery, three batteries 226 1st Brigade, Hill: 5th (1st batt.) 944 9th ” 761 38th ” 953 ---- 2,658 2nd Brigade, Ferguson: 36th 591 40th (1st batt.) 923 71st ” 935 ---- 2,449 3rd Brigade, Nightingale: 29th 616 82nd (1st batt.) 904 ---- 1,520 4th Brigade, Bowes: 6th (1st batt.) 943 32nd ” 870 ---- 1,813