being made a member of the Regency by Dalrymple, he should have remained at Lisbon and worked with his colleagues. But returning to his own flock, he reassumed the authority which he had possessed during the early days of the insurrection, and pursued a policy of his own, which often differed from that of his Regency at large, and was sometimes in flagrant opposition to it. His position, in fact, was similar to that of Palafox at Saragossa, and like the Aragonese general he often practised the arts of demagogy in order to keep firm his influence over the populace. He was all for the system of the _levée en masse_; and summoned together unmanageable bands which he was able neither to equip nor to control. He praised their zeal, was wilfully blind to their frequent excesses, and seldom tried to turn their energies into profitable channels. Indeed, he was so ignorant of military matters himself, that he had no useful orders to give. He ignored the advice of the Portuguese generals in his district, and got little profit from that of two foreign officers whom the British Government sent him--the Hanoverian General Von der Decken and the Prussian Baron Eben. These gentlemen he seems to have conciliated, and to have played off against the native military authorities. But if they gave him good counsel, there are no signs in his actions that he turned it to account. All the British witnesses who passed through Oporto in January and February 1809, describe the place as being in a state of patriotic frenzy, and under mob law rather than administered by any regular and legal government[221]. The only fruitful military effort made in this part of Portugal was that of the gallant Sir Robert Wilson, who raised there in November and December his celebrated ‘Loyal Lusitanian Legion.’ This was intended to be the core of a subsidiary Portuguese division in British pay, distinct from the national army. When Wilson arrived in Oporto the bishop welcomed him, and forwarded in every way the formation of the corps. In a few days the Legion had 3,000 recruits of excellent quality, of whom Wilson could arm and clothe only some 1,300, for the equipment which he had brought with him was limited. He soon discovered, however, that the bishop’s zeal in his behalf was mainly due to the desire to have a solid force at hand which should be independent of the Portuguese generals. He wished the Legion to be, as it were, his own body-guard. Sir Robert was ill pleased, and being unwilling to mix himself in the domestic feuds of the bishop and the Regency, or to become the tool of a faction, quitted Oporto as soon as his men could march. With one strong battalion, a couple of squadrons of cavalry, and an incomplete battery--under 1,500 men in all--he moved first to Villa Real (Dec. 14), and then to the frontier, where he posted himself near Almeida and took over the task of observing Lapisse’s division, which from its base at Salamanca was threatening the Portuguese border.