Olivenza ought never to have been defended. For since its cession by Portugal to Spain after Godoy’s futile ‘War of the Oranges’ in 1801, it had been systematically neglected. The breach made by the Spaniards at its siege ten years before had never been properly repaired--only one-third of the masonry had been replaced, and the rest of the gap had been merely stopped with earth. Its one outlying work, a lunette 300 yards only from its southern point, was lying in ruins and unoccupied. The circuit of its walls was about a mile, but there were only eighteen guns[50] to guard them. The garrison down to the 5th of January had consisted of a single battalion left there by La Romana, when he marched for Portugal in October. But Mendizabal, apparently in inexcusable ignorance of the condition of the place, had ordered a whole brigade of his infantry to throw themselves into it when Soult began to press forward. He sacrificed, in fact, 2,400 out of the 6,000 bayonets of his division by bidding them shut themselves up in an utterly untenable fortress[51]. The governor, General Manuel Herck--an old Swiss officer--was ailing and quite incapable; a man of resources might have done something with the heavy garrison placed under his orders, even though the walls were weak and artillery almost non-existent; but Herck disgraced himself. [50] Soult reports eighteen guns surrendered: but Herck says in his dispatch that only eight were serviceable. [51] The original garrison was Voluntarios de Navarra, 1,150 bayonets properly belonging to O’Donnell’s division, which was at Lisbon with La Romana. The reinforcements thrown in at the last moment were four battalions, 2,400 bayonets, from the regiments Merida, Truxillo, Barbastro, and Monforte--the two former part of the original army of Estremadura, the two latter part of Del Parque’s old army from the north.