All these troops were entirely unfitted for a place in the line of battle; Wellington refused to mix them with the regular brigades, save in the garrisons of Almeida, Abrantes, and Elvas. He directed the brigadiers never to risk them in battle, even against a much inferior force of the French. Their sole purpose was to cut lines of communication, to render marauding by the enemy’s small detachments impossible, and to restrict his power of making reconnaissances far afield. They were told that they might defend a pass or a ford for a time, so as to delay the advance of a hostile column, but that they were never to commit themselves to a serious combat with any considerable body. Convoys, stragglers, small detachments, were the game on which they must prey. The programme was not a brilliant one to lay down before an ambitious officer, and more than once Silveira, Trant, and Wilson disobeyed orders, and tried to withstand a full French division in some chosen position. Such experiments almost always ended in a disaster. It was not surprising, for the militia were not troops from whom much could be expected. The best men in every district had been taken for the regular army; all the trained officers were also needed there. The militia _cadres_ were composed of civilians who had to learn their duties just as much as the privates whom they were supposed to instruct. All the patriotic and energetic young men of the governing classes had sought commissions in the line; the less willing and active were driven into the militia. Service therein brought neither much credit nor much promotion. If the Regency half-starved the regulars, it three-quarter-starved the militia, which was normally in a state of destitution of clothing, shoes, and food. Hardly a regiment was provided with uniforms; as a rule only the officers showed the regulation blue and silver. As long as the corps was in its own district it was fed somehow, but when moved to some strategical point in the rugged mountains of the Beira, it was liable to go wholly to pieces from sheer privation. Fortunately the Portuguese peasant led a frugal life at all times, and expected little; the desertion, though large, was not nearly so great as might have been expected. The fact was that the men were essentially loyal, and hated the French with a perfect hatred. They might be very poor soldiers, but they were very bitter personal enemies of the invader. Nevertheless, they were liable to panics on very slight provocation. ‘At the best they are a very daily and uncertain sort of fighting people[191],’ remarked one of their leaders. Another wrote in a more forcible language, ‘Scripture says, Put not your trust in princes--I say, Fool is the man who puts his trust in a damnable militia.’ Each of these sentences was indited the day after a disastrous and wholly unnecessary rout.