But while the French were striving to rally and to form a new front, the leaden hand of Sir Harry Burrard was laid upon the British army. That leisurely person had only landed on the morning of the twenty-first, and the battle was in full progress before he rode up from the beach to Vimiero. He had the grace not to interfere with the movements of troops which Wellesley had already ordered; but when the victory was won, and his subordinate rode up to him crying, ‘Sir Harry, now is your time to advance, the enemy is completely beaten, and we shall be in Lisbon in three days[231],’ he refused to listen. The army, he said, had done enough for one day, and he intended to wait for the arrival of Sir John Moore and the division from the Baltic before making any further move. Greatly disconcerted by this stolid opposition, Wellesley launched forth into argument: the French army, as he pointed out, was now so placed that it had lost control of its line of retreat on Torres Vedras and Lisbon. Hill’s intact brigade, and those of Fane and Anstruther had but to advance a mile or so, and the French were irretrievably cut off from their base of operations. At the same time the five brigades of the left wing, of which those of Bowes and Crawfurd were absolutely intact, might so hustle and press the retreating enemy that he could never rally. At this moment arrived an aide-de-camp from Ferguson, who begged to be allowed to go on: ‘a column of broken troops 1,500 to 2,000 strong had in their confusion got into a hollow, and could be cut off from their main body by a movement in advance of his brigade[232].’ The enemy had lost all their artillery, were retiring in the utmost confusion, none of them save the cavalry were regularly formed, and it was his hope that he might be allowed to continue to go forward. Burrard still remained obdurate, though Wellesley pointed out to him that he had nine thousand fresh troops in hand, that every soldier had a day’s food cooked in his haversack, that the ammunition reserve was ready to move, and that, with twelve days’ provisions in the camp and an ample store of munitions, he had it in his power to march forward both rapidly and with complete security[233]. But all these arguments were of no effect. The slow and cautious Burrard chose to believe that Junot might still have a large and intact reserve, that his cavalry was too dangerous to be meddled with, and that the dispersion of the British brigades (there were more than three miles between Hill’s extreme right and Ferguson’s extreme left) would make a general advance a very dislocated and hazardous business[234]. He utterly refused to listen to any further discussion, and, as the French were now in full retreat and disappearing over the eastern horizon, ordered the troops back to camp. They returned with colours flying and bands playing, dragging the captured French guns, and with a considerable column of prisoners in their midst.