Coleman, Harvey, Collins, and Bradford had charge of the regular brigades of the field army. The native generals, save those above mentioned, were placed in administrative posts, or in charge of those sections of the militia which were probably destined to see no service. [183] Silveira was the despair of Beresford and his chief-of-the-staff D’Urban. The latter writes (Apr. 19, 1810): ‘This general is the most extraordinary of all the people in this extraordinary country. Perpetually fluctuating--incapable of standing still--always wishing to move backward or forward--all his movements to no purpose but that of harassing his troops. The man is either very weak or very designing--perhaps both. Anyhow he is a mischievous charlatan, and I wish the Marshal would not yield to the prejudices of the people by employing him.’ The second point of difficulty in the organization of the Portuguese army was the commissariat. In the old days it had been a purely civilian branch of the service, non-military intendants dealing with contractors and merchants. For this had been substituted a _Junta de Viveres_ mainly composed of officers, which proved as ineffective, if not as corrupt, as the body which had preceded it. The British government had taken over the responsibility of paying half the Portuguese army[184], but not that of feeding it, and despite of the handsome subsidies that it paid to the Regency for the general purposes of the war, the native troops, especially those quartered far from Lisbon, were often in a state of semi-starvation. ‘The Portuguese corps ought to have a commissariat attached to them, and I believe each brigade has a commissary,’ wrote Wellington, ‘but they have no magazines and no money to purchase supplies[185].’ One main difficulty arose from the fact that the Junta de Viveres shrank from the heavy expense of organizing a proper transport train, and tried to make shift with requisitioned carts and oxen, which were difficult to get (since the British army was competing with the Portuguese for draught animals) and still harder to retain--for the peasant driver always absconded with his beasts when he found an opportunity. Another difficulty was that the Junta tried to feed the troops with requisitioned corn, instead of paying for it with money down; hence it got grudging service. ‘I know from experience,’ observes Wellington, ‘that the Portuguese army could not be in the distress under which it suffers, from want of provisions, if only a part of the food it receives from the country were paid for.’ And he suggested as a remedy that the British ministers should earmark part of the subsidy for use on the commissariat and no other purpose[186]. It was long before this matter was set to rights. Beresford’s correspondence in 1810 bristles with complaints as to the inefficiency of the Junta de Viveres[187].