But the danger was only postponed, not averted, by Moore’s daring irruption into Old Castile. This the Portuguese Regency understood; and during the first two months of 1809 they displayed a considerable amount of energy, though it was in great part energy misdirected. Their chief blunder was that instead of straining every nerve to complete their regular army, on which the main stress of the invasion was bound to fall, they diverted much of their zeal to the task of raising a vast _levée en masse_ of the whole able-bodied population of the realm. This error had its roots in old historical memories. The deliverance of Portugal from the Spanish yoke in the long war of independence in the seventeenth century, had been achieved mainly by the _Ordenanza_, the old constitutional force of the realm, which resembled the English _Fyrd_ of the Middle Ages. It had done good service again in the wars of 1703-12, and even in the shorter struggle of 1762. But in the nineteenth century it was no longer possible to reckon upon it as a serious line of defence, especially when the enemy to be held back was not the disorderly Spanish army but the legions of Bonaparte. When there were not even arms enough in Portugal to supply the line-battalions with a musket for every man, it was insane to summon together huge masses of peasantry, and to make over to them some of the precious firearms which should have been reserved for the regulars. The majority, however, of the _Ordenanza_ were not even supplied with muskets, they were given pikes--weapons with which their ancestors had done good service in 1650, but which it was useless to serve out in 1809. The Regency had procured some 17,000[220] from the British Government, and had caused many thousands more to be manufactured. Both on the northern and the eastern frontier great hordes of country-folk, equipped with these useless and antiquated arms, were gathered together. Destitute of discipline and of officers, insufficiently supplied with food, the prey of every rumour, true or false, that ran along the border, they were a source of danger rather than of strength to the realm. The cry of ‘treachery,’ which inevitably arises among armed mobs, was always being raised in their encampments. Hence came tumults and murders, for the peasantry had a strong suspicion of the loyalty of the governing classes--the result of the subservience to the French invader which had been displayed by many of the authorities, both civil and military, in 1808. Orders which they did not understand, or into which a sinister meaning could be read by a suspicious mind, generally caused a riot, and sometimes the assassination of the unfortunate commander whom the Regency had placed over the horde. In Oporto the state of affairs was particularly bad: the bishop, though a sincere patriot and a man of energy, had drunk too deeply of the delights of power during his rule in the summer months. After