Soult’s vanguard crossed the Portuguese frontier between Monterey and Chaves on March 9, 1809: it was exactly five months since the last of Junot’s troops had evacuated the realm on October 9, 1808. In the period which had elapsed between those two dates much might have been done to develop--or rather to create--a scheme of national defence and a competent army. Unhappily for Portugal the Regency had not risen to the opportunity, and when the second French invasion came upon them the military organization of the realm was still in a state of chaos. During the autumn months of 1808 the Portuguese Government had been almost as sanguine and as careless as the Spanish Supreme Junta. They had seen Junot beaten and expelled: they still beheld a large British army in their midst; and they did not comprehend the full extent of the impending danger, when the news came that Bonaparte was nearing the Pyrenees, and that the columns of the ‘Grand Army’ were debouching into the Peninsula. It was not till Moore had departed that they began to conceive certain doubts as to the situation: nor was it till Madrid had fallen that they at last realized that the invader was once more at their gates, and that they must prepare to defend themselves. There were still two months of respite granted to them. Portugal--like Andalusia--was saved for a moment by Moore’s march to Sahagun. The great field army which Napoleon had collected for the advance on Lisbon was turned off northwards to pursue the British, and on the New Year’s day of 1809 the only French force in proximity to the frontier of the realm was the division of Lapisse, which Bonaparte had dropped at Salamanca to form the connecting link between Soult and Ney in Galicia, and the troops under Victor and King Joseph in the vicinity of Madrid.