could have reached Abrantes or Almeida or any other goal that he chose. The fact was that the reasons for refusing to adopt a ‘forward policy’ were moral and not physical. Cradock, in common with Sir John Moore and many other British officers, believed that Portugal could not be defended, and was thinking more of securing himself a safe embarkation than of exercising any influence on the main current of the war. When Moore’s army had passed out of sight, and was known to be retiring in the direction of Galicia, it seemed to Cradock that his own position was hopeless. Even if granted time to concentrate his scattered battalions, he would be forced to fly to the sea and take shipping the moment that any serious French force crossed the frontier. He had not sufficiently accurate information to enable him to see that both Lapisse at Salamanca, and the weak divisions of the 4th Corps which lay in the valley of the Tagus, could not possibly move forward against him. It would have been insane for either of these forces to have attacked Portugal--the one was at this moment less than 10,000, the other about 12,000 strong--they were without communications, and separated by 100 miles of pathless sierras. Moreover the troops in the valley of the Tagus were fully occupied in observing the Spanish army of Estremadura. At the opening of the New Year, therefore, Cradock was in absolutely no danger, and might have gone forward either to Abrantes or to Almeida in perfect security. In the first position he would have menaced the flank of the 4th Corps: in the second he would have exercised a useful pressure on Lapisse. In either case he would have encouraged the Portuguese and lent moral support to the Spaniards. But Cradock was possessed by that miserable theory which was so frequently expounded by the men of desponding mind during the early years of the Peninsular War, to the effect that Portugal was indefensible, and would have to be evacuated whenever a strong French force approached its frontier[235]. It was fortunate for England and for Europe that Wellesley had other views. The history of the next three years was to show that a British general could find something better to do than to pack up his baggage and prepare to embark, whenever the enemy came down in superior strength to the Portuguese border. [235] Sir John Moore himself ventilated this view in a letter to Lord Castlereagh from Salamanca, Nov. 25, 1808. It is this fact that explains Napier’s very tender treatment of Cradock, who quoted Moore as his justifying authority. Moreover Cradock had been very obliging in placing all his papers at Napier’s disposal, a fact which prepossessed the historian in his favour.