[243] All authorities agree as to the inferior character and status of a great part of the Portuguese officers. Dumouriez remarks [1766] that ‘their pay does not enable them to live better than the common soldiers, whose comrades and relatives they often are. The subaltern ranks are filled from the inferior classes, and their hatred of foreigners prevents their association with, or receiving any improvement from, them: hence it is that they remain in such ignorance and wretchedness’ (p. 17). Halliday remarks (p. 106) that ‘even captains had not the rank of gentlemen.’ Compare with this Patterson’s curious note (vol. i. p. 250), ‘The familiarity that subsists between the native officers and their men renders ineffective all the authority of the former, at the same time defeating the object to be attained by discipline. They eat, gamble, and drink together. I have even seen them waltzing and figuring off in the _contra-danza_, captains with corporals, majors with drumboys--all Jack-fellows well met, and excellent boon companions. They will not of themselves do anything, their good qualities must be elicited by strangers. I know of nothing that stamps the character of Lord Beresford as a man of energy and perseverance, more than the way in which he has organized them, and from a miserable undisciplined rabble produced, in course of time, a fair body of fighting troops, who performed (encouraged by their English officers) some spirited service during the war.’ The short Spanish war of 1801-2 had revealed the complete disorganization of the army. Hasty measures were taken to strengthen it: in the moment of panic every infantry regiment was ordered to raise a second battalion, and though the number of companies per battalion was lowered from seven to five, yet as each of them was now to consist of 150 instead of 116 men, the total strength of each infantry corps was raised to 1,500 officers and men. At the same time the cavalry regiments were supposed to have been increased to 470 sabres[244], and a fourth regiment of artillery was created. Nor was this all: an ‘Experimental Legion’ for light infantry service, eight companies strong, with a couple of squadrons and a horse-artillery battery attached to it, was soon afterwards raised by the Marquis D’Alorna. [244] Of these, twelve squadrons were originally cuirassiers (Dumouriez, p. 18), but their armament had been discarded before 1800, and one regiment only was light horse. But after the peace of Badajoz had been signed the army was allowed to sink back into its old sloth and inefficiency. When Junot entered Portugal in December, 1807, it is doubtful if there were as many as 20,000 troops really embodied, though the nominal total of the national army reached nearly 50,000 men[245]. [245]