continued the line southward, Fonseca’s brigade at Mugem, Campbell’s at Salvaterra. Fane’s four regiments of Portuguese cavalry, and the British 13th Light Dragoons, were strung out by squadrons along the whole front from the neighbourhood of Abrantes to Almeirim, patrolling the river bank with unceasing care[7]. [5] See vol. iii. p. 462. [6] The first hint of this occurs in a letter to Lord Liverpool, from Cartaxo, December 21, in which Wellington ‘thinks it not improbable that a large part (if not the whole) of the French army of Andalusia may be introduced into the southern part of this kingdom [Portugal].’ [7] These arrangements are taken from the unpublished diary of D’Urban, the Quarter-Master-General of the Portuguese army. On the 29th of November Hill was disabled by a severe attack of fever, and the control of all the troops beyond the Tagus devolved on his senior brigadier, William Stewart. Wellington only allowed this hard-fighting but somewhat too venturesome officer to retain his very responsible command for a few weeks. Troubled by Stewart’s constant requests to be allowed to make offensive movements against the French, which did not enter into his own plans[8], and dreading the consequences of his enterprise, the Commander-in-Chief superseded him, by sending over Beresford to take the charge of all the forces on the Alemtejo bank of the Tagus (December 30). He would have preferred to give the duty to Hill, who had in the preceding summer carried out a similar task with complete success, while he watched Reynier from Castello Branco[9]. But Hill’s fever lingered on for many weeks, and when he was convalescent the medical men insisted that he must return to England for change of air. This he did in February, and we miss his familiar name in the records of the Peninsular War for a space of three months, till his reappearance at the front in May. [8] Wellington (December 8) sarcastically thanks Stewart for sending him plans for an attack on the enemy, but utterly scouts them. _Dispatches_, vii. pp. 36-7. [9] See pp. 269-79 of vol. iii. Beresford therefore began, with the New Year, to exercise a semi-independent command over the detached force beyond the Tagus, which he was to retain for nearly six months. The experiment of giving him this responsible duty was not altogether a happy one; and after his unsuccessful operations in Estremadura, and his ill-fought victory at Albuera, Wellington withdrew him to other duties in June, and once more handed over the troops south of the Tagus to the cautious yet capable hands of Hill.