Meanwhile both parties were decidedly nervous as to the possible movements of their adversaries. If Wellington sometimes thought that Masséna might make an attempt to cross the Tagus, Masséna was very reasonably suspicious that Wellington might make a surprise-attack upon Junot’s corps along the upper Rio Mayor, and try to cut it off, before it could be succoured by Ney from Thomar and Golegão. This suspicion led to the only skirmish that marked the month of January. On the 19th the Marshal ordered Junot to make a reconnaissance in force beyond the river, along the Alcoentre road, to see whether a rumour that an English division had been brought up behind Pack’s Portuguese outposts were true. The Duke of Abrantes conducted the affair himself, at the head of 3,000 infantry of Clausel’s division and 500 horse. He pressed in the cavalry screen in front of Pack, consisting of a squadron of the 1st Hussars of the King’s German Legion, and occupied the village of Rio Mayor, from which he drove out two Portuguese companies. Discovering nothing in reserve save Pack’s brigade, drawn up for resistance on the heights to the rear, and noting no red-coated battalions, the French withdrew after a little skirmishing, and returned to their lines. During this trifling affair Junot received a painful but not dangerous wound from the carbine of a hussar vedette. The ball struck him on the side of the nose, broke the bone there, and lodged in his cheek; but it was extracted with no difficulty, and he was able to resume command of his corps within a few days[108]. Nothing further occurred on this front till February 10, when the English cavalry paid a return visit to the French outlying picket east of the Rio Mayor, drove it in, and retired with an officer and ten men prisoners. [108] The best account of this reconnaissance is in the Journal of Sprünglin, pp. 462-3. On February 5th the third and final period of Masséna’s stay on the Tagus may be said to have begun, with the arrival of the last orders from Paris which he was destined to receive. He had been more than a month without any official intelligence of what was going on behind him, the latest dispatches to hand having been those brought by Drouet at the end of the old year. But General Foy now appeared with the orders which the Emperor had issued on December 22nd. He had cut his way from Ciudad Rodrigo across the eastern mountains, and along the Estrada Nova, at the head of a column of 1,800 men, mostly composed of drafts belonging to the 2nd Corps, which he had found waiting on the Spanish frontier. The rains had been continuous, the badness of the road was notorious, and Colonel Grant with a small party of local Ordenança hung about the route of the column for the last five days of its march, and slew or captured more than a hundred stragglers. The total loss by fatigue and sickness was much greater[109].