in avoiding, while he was always at hand to fall on weak or incautious detachments on the march[258]. [256] Wellington, _Dispatches_, vii. p. 448. [257] But, as he wrote to Beresford on April 14, ‘I was not very sanguine of the results of the blockade of that place, and had indeed determined not to make it in any strength: and now it is useless to keep anybody on the other side of the Agueda save for food and observation.’ (_Dispatches_, vii. 457.) [258] For the state of semi-blockade in which Sanchez had kept Ciudad Rodrigo, see the Memoirs of the Duchess of Abrantes (vii. pp. 275-7), who was beleaguered there while her husband was in Portugal. For the hunts organized against him by Thiébault, see the latter’s _Memoirs_, iv. 449-51, &c. Sanchez intercepted numbers of dispatches which were of great use to Wellington, as they kept him informed of the state of the French in northern Spain. On April 8th, as Wellington had expected, the Army of Portugal resumed its march into the interior of the kingdom of Leon, all the three corps passing the Agueda, and retiring, Reynier to San Felices el Grande, Junot to Santi Espiritus, Loison to Alba de Yeltes. Junot, while passing, had been ordered to send into Rodrigo a reinforcement for the garrison; he detached a battalion of the 15th and another of the Irish Legion, which brought up the troops in the place to 3,000 men. From the 8th to the 11th the retreat continued, till at last the 6th Corps went into cantonments at Salamanca, Alba de Tormes, and other neighbouring places, the 2nd at and about Ledesma, and the 8th at Toro, behind the others. Drouet and his two divisions held the line of observation against the Anglo-Portuguese, with head quarters at San Muñoz. So ended, fifty miles within the borders of Spain, the movement that had begun at Santarem and Punhete.