Between these two divergent views as to the practicability of defending Portugal, Lord Castlereagh had to make his decision. On it--though he could not be aware of the fact--depended the future of Britain and of Bonaparte. He carefully considered the situation; after the disasters of the Corunna retreat it required some moral courage for a minister to advise the sending of another British army to the Peninsula. Moore’s gloomy prognostications were echoed by many military experts, and there were leading men--soldiers and politicians--who declared that the only thing that now remained to be done was to withdraw Cradock’s 10,000 sabres and bayonets from Lisbon, before the French came near enough to that city to make their embarkation difficult. Castlereagh resolved to stake his faith on the correctness of Wellesley’s conclusions: all through these years of contest he had made him his most trusted adviser on things military, and now he did not swerve from his confidence. He announced to him, privately in the end of March, and officially on April 2[340], that the experiment of a second expedition to Portugal should be tried, and that he himself should have the conduct of it. Reinforcements should at once be sent out to bring the British army at Lisbon up to a total of 30,000 men--the number to which Wellesley, on consideration, raised the original 20,000 of which he had spoken. Beresford had already sailed, with orders to do all that he could for the reorganization of the disorderly native forces of Portugal. The few regiments in England that were ready for instant embarkation were sent off ere March ended, and began to arrive at Lisbon early in April[341]. Others were rapidly prepared for foreign service; but it was a misfortune that the Corunna battalions were still too sickly and depleted to be able to sail, so that troops who had seen nothing of the first campaign had to be sent out. The majority of them were ‘second battalions’ from the home establishment[342], many of them very weak in numbers and full of young soldiers, as they had been drained in the previous year to fill their first battalions up to full strength. Finally, just behind the first convoys of reinforcements, Wellesley himself set sail from Portsmouth, after resigning his position as Under Secretary for Ireland, which, by a curious anomaly, he had continued to hold all through the campaign of Vimiero, and the proceedings of inquiry concerning the Convention of Cintra. He sailed upon April 14, in the _Surveillante_ frigate, had the narrowest of escapes from shipwreck on the Isle of Wight during the first night of his voyage, but soon obtained favourable winds and reached Lisbon on the twenty-second, after a rapid passage of less than eight days. Just before he started there had been received from Portugal not only the correct intelligence that Soult had stormed Oporto upon March 29, but a false rumour that Victor had been joined by the corps of