The rout and pursuit died away in the southern valleys beyond Braga, and Soult could take stock of his victory. He had captured seventeen guns, five flags, and the whole of the stores of Eben’s army: he had killed, according to his own estimate, some 4,000 men[285], and taken only 400 prisoners. This shocking disproportion between the dead and the captives was caused by the fact that the French in most parts of the field had given no quarter. Some of their historians explain that their cruelty resulted from the discovery that the Portuguese had been murdering and mutilating the stragglers who fell into their hands[286]. But it was really due to the exasperation of spirit that always accompanies guerrilla warfare. Constantly worried by petty ambushes, ‘sniped’ in their bivouacs, never allowed a moment of rest, the soldiers were in a state of nervous irritation which found vent in needless and unjustifiable cruelty. In the fight they had lost only forty killed and 160 wounded, figures which afford no excuse for the wholesale slaughter in the pursuit to which they gave themselves up. [285] Eben, in his report to Cradock at the Record Office, says 1,000 only, of whom more than 200 belonged to the Lusitanian Legion. [286] Le Noble, p. 142. St. Chamans, p. 121. Naylies and Fantin des Odoards, though both mentioning the slaughter in which they took part, do not give this justification for it. The latter says that the French gave no quarter save to men in uniform. In the first flush of victory the French supposed that they had made an end of the _Ordenanza_, and that northern Portugal was at their feet. ‘Cette journée a été fatale à l’insurrection portugaise,’ wrote one of the victors in his diary[287]. But no greater mistake could have been made: though many of the routed horde dispersed to their homes, the majority rallied again behind the Avé, only ten or twelve miles from the battle-field. Nor did the battle of Braga even open the way to Galicia: General Botilho, with the levies of the Valenza and Viana district, closed in behind Soult and blocked the way to Tuy, the nearest French garrison. The Marshal had only conquered the ground on which he stood, and already his communication with Chaves, his last base, had been intercepted by detachments sent into the passes by Silveira. [287] Fantin des Odoards, p. 216. Soult halted three days at Braga, a time which he utilized for the repair of his artillery, and the replenishing of the cartridge boxes of his infantry from the not too copious supply of munitions captured from the Portuguese. His cavalry scoured the country down the Cavado as far as Barcelos, and southward to the line of the Avé, only to find insurgents everywhere, the bridges broken, and the fords dredged up and staked.