When Wellington resolved to call out the Ordenança in 1810 he was ignorant of none of these facts. Nevertheless, he insisted that the Regency should issue the old royal ‘Ordinance’ to call out the levy. His object was threefold: from the political and moral point of view it was necessary to take this measure, because it was the ancient and established method of proclaiming that the country was in danger. It was so understood by the peasantry, in whose memories the traditions of the Spanish invasions were still fresh; they expected to be summoned, and would have doubted the imminence of the emergency if they had not been. The call was at once an appeal to their patriotism, and equivalent to a proclamation of martial law. Secondly, Wellington hoped to find assistance to a certain degree for the work which he had set aside for the militia, by the aid of the Ordenança. Pervading the whole country-side, and knowing every goat-track and inaccessible fastness, their motley companies would surround the invading army as it marched, prevent marauding by small parties, and render inter-communication between columns impossible, save by large detachments. French narrators of the campaign speak of ‘the cruel callousness with which Wellington exposed these half-armed peasants to the wrath of the most efficient army in the world,’ and wax sentimental over the miseries of the Portuguese. But sentiment from such a quarter is suspicious: it is absurd to find old soldiers writing as if the main duty of a general defending a country were to spare its peasantry as much inconvenience as possible. Did not Napoleon in 1814 make every endeavour to raise Lorraine and Champagne _en masse_ in the rear of the Allies, and has any French critic ever blamed him for doing so? Was the actual misery suffered by the inhabitants of Beira so much greater than what they would have endured if they had remained at home, and offered no resistance? The country-side would have been stripped bare by an army forced to make ‘war support war,’ and one can hardly believe, judging from parallel incidents in Spain, that outrages would have been conspicuous by their absence.