On March 29 Masséna gave the orders which marked the abandonment of his great plan, and commenced his retrograde movement towards Ciudad Rodrigo. Reynier and the 2nd Corps, abandoning the mountain roads, came down by a lateral march to Sabugal in the upper valley of the Coa: they were to stop there till Junot and the 8th Corps, coming in from Belmonte, should have reached them and passed behind them. The 6th Corps meanwhile was to halt at Guarda till the 8th Corps had extricated itself from the mountains, but it was ordered to throw back one division (Ferey’s) to Adão on the Sabugal road, eight miles to the south-east, as the first échelon of its forthcoming movement of retreat towards the Coa. Masséna himself and the head quarters of the army moved from Guarda on the morning of the 29th to Pega, a village some miles nearer the Coa than Adão. On this morning the British army, of which Masséna had heard practically nothing for eight days, put in its appearance in the most forcible fashion, falling upon the enemy just as he was in the midst of a complicated movement, with his three corps separated from each other by distances of some twenty miles. Wellington, it will be remembered, had halted about half of his army on the Alva upon March 20th, for sheer want of provisions, sending on only the two light cavalry brigades and the 3rd, 6th, and Light Divisions to pursue Masséna on the Celorico road. He had no doubt that the enemy was about to retire from Celorico and Guarda towards the Spanish frontier with the smallest delay--the policy of Ney and of every one else in the French army save Masséna himself. On the 24th, Slade’s dragoons occupied Celorico, and reported that the enemy had left it on the preceding day; two columns were traced: the larger [6th and 8th Corps] had gone towards Guarda, the smaller [Drouet with Conroux’s division of the 9th Corps] had taken the high-road towards Freixadas and Almeida. There was nothing yet to indicate to Wellington Masséna’s intention of proceeding in the direction of Estremadura and the middle Tagus. He wrote on the 25th to General Spencer, ‘The French have retired from Celorico, and appear to intend to take up a line on the Coa. Their left has gone by Guarda, apparently for Sabugal’--and to Beresford, ‘The French have gone towards the Coa: their left will cross at Sabugal, I should think, and their right about Pinhel and Almeida[233]’. [233] Both dispatches are dated from Santa Marinha, March 25th.