[290] I draw these deductions from Beresford’s and Eben’s reports in the Record Office. Beresford (writing to Castlereagh on March 29, the day of the storm) complains that he can get no proper ‘morning states’ out of the officers at Oporto, but says that the Bishop has there nos. 6 and 18 of the line, Vittoria’s two battalions and the wrecks of the 2nd Lusitanian Legion. He speaks of two or three militia regiments, 9,000 armed citizens, and an indefinite number of _Ordenanza_. Eben gives some details concerning his own doings. Da Luz Soriano mentions Champlemond and his battalion of the 21st of the line. As to the _Ordenanza_, 9,000 seems a high estimate for the local Oporto horde, for that town with 70,000 souls had already supplied two regiments of the line, two battalions of the Lusitanian Legion, and a militia regiment, 6,500 men in all. To complete the picture of the defenders of Oporto it must be added that the anarchy tempered by assassination, which had been prevailing in the city ever since the Bishop assumed charge of the government, had grown to a head during the last few days. On the receipt of the news of the disaster at Braga it had culminated in a riot, during which the populace constituted a sort of Revolutionary Tribunal at the Porto do Olival. They haled out of the prisons all persons who had been consigned to them on a charge of sympathizing with the French, hung fourteen of these unfortunates, including the brigadier-general Luiz da Oliveira, massacred many more in the streets, and dragged the bodies round the town on hurdles. The Bishop, though he had 5,000 regular troops at hand, made no attempt to intervene--‘he could not stand in the way of the righteous vengeance of the people upon traitors.’ On the night of the twenty-eighth he retired to a place of safety, the Serra Convent across the river, after bestowing his solemn benediction upon the garrison, and handing over the further conduct of the defence to the three generals whose names we have already cited. The town of Oporto was hidden from Soult’s eyes by the range of heights, crowned by fortifications, which lay before him. For the place was built entirely upon the downslope of the hill towards the Douro, and was invisible till those approaching it were within half a mile of its outer buildings. It is a town of steep streets running down to the water, and meeting at the foot of the great pontoon-bridge, more than 200 yards long, which links it to the transpontine suburb of Villa Nova, and the adjacent height of the Serra do Pilar. The river front forms a broad quay, along which were lying at the time nearly thirty merchant ships, mostly English vessels laden with port wine, which were wind-bound by a persistent North-Wester, and could not cross the bar and get out to sea.