It remains to speak of the position in which the enemy was found. Between the 14th of March, when Soult departed from Seville, and the 25th, when Beresford’s army made its sudden and quite unexpected descent into the middle of the French forces, only eleven days elapsed; but Mortier had turned them to good account, and had more than fulfilled all that had been expected of him. On the very day that Soult started for Seville he marched against Campo Mayor, with nine battalions of infantry, a cavalry brigade, and part of the siege-train which had just captured Badajoz. One other battalion was left as garrison in Olivenza, the six that remained from the corps were told off for Badajoz, where General Phillipon had been appointed governor. With the aid of three companies of sappers they were already busily engaged in levelling their own old siege-works, and commencing the repairs to the battered front of the walls. Mortier conceived that there could not be any danger in carrying out the orders that Soult had left, for he could find no traces of any hostile force in his vicinity, save the Portuguese garrison of Elvas, and the 4,000 men who formed the wrecks of Mendizabal’s army. This demoralized force had rallied at Campo Mayor, but on receiving the news of the fall of Badajoz retired in haste to Estremos, twenty miles within the Portuguese frontier. Their presence there was a danger rather than a defence to the Alemtejo, for not only did they consume some magazines collected there by Wellington’s orders for the use of the expeditionary force, but they plundered recklessly in the neighbouring villages, and committed such outrages that the Portuguese Government was almost forced to take military measures against them[314]. Mortier had nothing to fear from this quarter, while he could hear no news of the approach of any British force from the direction of the Tagus. The 2nd Division and Hamilton’s Portuguese, it will be remembered, had only been ordered to resume their movement towards Estremadura on the 13th, by Wellington’s dispatch of the 12th, and when Mortier started from Badajoz they were only just commencing their advance from the neighbourhood of Abrantes towards Crato and Portalegre, and were very nearly a hundred miles away, so that it was impossible that he should get any information concerning them.