[254] Serras’ division consisted of the 113th Line, a Tuscan regiment originally employed in Catalonia, which had been so cut up in 1809 that it had been sent back to refill its cadres; also of the 4th of the Vistula (two battalions), a Polish regiment raised in 1810, with four provisional battalions, and three stray battalions belonging to regiments in the South, which had not been allowed to go on to join Soult [4th battalions of the 32nd and 58th Line and of 12th Léger]: his total strength was 8,000 men. This document is a very curious product of the imperial pen. It would be hard to find in the rest of the _Correspondance_ a dispatch which so completely abandons the ‘Napoleonic methods’ of quick concentration and sharp strokes, and orders a delay of three months or more in the completion of a campaign whose preliminary operations had begun so far back as February. We may reject at once the explanation offered by some of Napoleon’s enemies, to the effect that he was jealous of Masséna, and did not wish him to achieve too rapid or too brilliant a success. But it is clear that a humanitarian regard for the possible sufferings of the inhabitants of Lisbon--the only reason alleged for the delay--is an inadequate motive. Such things did not normally affect the Emperor, and he must have remembered that when Junot occupied Portugal at the mid-winter of 1807-8 famine had not played its part in the difficulties encountered by the French. Nor does it seem that an exaggerated estimate of the enemy’s strength induced him to postpone the attack till all the reinforcements had arrived. He under-estimates Wellington’s British troops by some 5,000, his Portuguese troops by at least 15,000 men. He is utterly ignorant of the works of Torres Vedras, though six months’ labour has already been lavished on them, and by this time they were already defensible. Three months seem an altogether exaggerated time to devote to the sieges of the two little old-fashioned second-rate fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida. From whence, then, comes this unprecedented resolve to adopt a ‘methodical’ system in dealing with the invasion of Portugal? It has been suggested that the Emperor was very desirous to make sure of the absolute suppression of the guerrilleros of the Pyrenees and the Ebro, before pushing forward his field army to Lisbon. Possibly he was influenced by his knowledge of the infinite difficulty that Masséna would find in equipping himself with a train, and more especially in creating magazines during the months before the harvest had been gathered in. Some have thought that, looking far forward, he considered it would be more disastrous to the English army to be ‘driven into the sea’ somewhere in the rough months of October and November rather than in the fine weather of June--and undoubtedly no one who reads his dispatches can doubt that the desire to deal an absolutely crushing blow to that army was his dominating idea throughout.