Thus when Sir John Cradock took over the command at Lisbon on December 14, 1808, he had at his disposal in all thirteen battalions of infantry, seven squadrons of cavalry, and five batteries, a force of about 12,000 men[230]. But not more than 10,000 were effective, for Sir John Moore had left behind precisely those of his regiments which were most sickly, when he marched for Spain. He had moreover discharged more than 2,000 additional sick upon Portugal ere he began field operations: they were encumbering the hospitals of Almeida and Lamego when Cradock appeared. The 10,000 men fit for service were scattered all over Portugal: the two battalions, which had just come back from Spain, and the two others which had been too late to join Moore, were in the north, at Almeida and Lamego[231]. One battalion was in garrison at Elvas[232]. Six lay in Lisbon, as also did the whole of the cavalry and guns[233]: two were on the march from Abrantes to Almeida[234]. [230] Napier (ii. 5) much under-estimates when he calls the whole ‘10,000 including sick.’ Cradock’s regiments add up to about 12,133 men including those in hospital. In addition there were all Moore’s sick, who, though many had died in the interim, presented on Feb. 18 in Portugal convalescents to the number of 2,000 men. [231] The 1/3rd, 1/45th, 5/60th, and 97th. [232] The 1/40th. [233] The four German battalions, the 3/27th and 2/31st. [234] The 2/9th and 29th. Such a dispersion of forces would have appalled the most enterprising of generals, and this was a title to which Cradock had certainly no claims. The two obvious courses between which he had to choose, were either to concentrate his little army on the frontier and make as much display of it in the face of the French as might be possible, or to abandon all idea of protecting exterior Portugal, and collect the scattered regiments in or about Lisbon. Cradock chose the second alternative. He argued that he was too weak to be of any effectual service on the frontier, and moreover found that there would be a vast difficulty in moving forward even the Lisbon garrison, for nearly all the available transport had been requisitioned for the use of Moore’s army, and had been carried off into Spain. Neither of these pleas is convincing: with regard to the first, it is merely necessary to point out that Sir Robert Wilson, with 1,500 men of the Lusitanian Legion, not yet three months old, made his presence felt on the frontier, checked Lapisse, and kept the whole province of Salamanca in a state of unrest. Ten thousand British bayonets and sabres could have done much more. As to the food and supplies, Cradock was arguing in the old eighteenth-century style, as if a British army was bound to move with all its baggage and impedimenta, its women and children. If he had chosen to ‘march light,’ and to take the route through the fertile and well-peopled Estremadura, he