The few weeks for which the Army of Portugal retained its position after the conference at Golegão, were spent by all its units as a mere period of preparation for the retreat, for the generals had long made up their minds that Soult would never appear on the Tagus. They seem even to have thought that he might have retired from Estremadura, for the distant thunder of the bombardment of Badajoz, which had been audible at Punhete during the first half of February, seemed to have ceased. This must have been due to some change of atmospheric conditions, for it was going on with redoubled energy in the last days of the month. But Masséna and his lieutenants argued that either the siege had been raised, or else Soult had taken the place, and yet was not marching to the Tagus. They seem to have regarded his doings as a negligible quantity, when coming to their final resolve. During the last days of February all the corps received preliminary orders, which could have no other meaning than that a retreat had been decided upon. The divisions were ordered to send their parks and heavy baggage to the rear, and the divisional batteries were told to complete as many gun-teams with good serviceable horses as was possible, by destroying caissons, and drafting their animals on to the guns. In some cases batteries had to be reduced to three or four pieces, even when half the caissons had been burnt. The 8th Corps destroyed fifty-one caissons on the 24th-27th February, yet still could find only four horses each for those remaining, including animals that were sick or barely fit for service[117]. But the transport of food was even more important than that of artillery material; in the central magazines there was gathered together some fifteen days’ of biscuit for the whole army, the flour for which had been procured with the greatest difficulty in small quantities, and had been hoarded to the last. This was issued to the regiments, with stringent orders not to use it till the actual retreat began. Some units were so pressed by starvation that they began to consume it, and ultimately started with only eight or ten days consumption in their packs or on their waggons. The whole of the transport was in a deplorable state; if the cavalry and artillery had lost 5,088 horses since November, the train had been depleted of draught-beasts in a still greater proportion, since they were both weaker to start with, and less carefully kept. Some regiments had no longer any horses attached to them, and could only show a few pack-mules and asses, quite insufficient for carrying their reserve ammunition and food[118]. Two things were certain--the one that if the army could not pick up provisions on the way by marauding, it would ultimately have to retire to its base within the frontiers of Spain. And no food could be collected for some days, since the first five stages of the retreat would be through a region already stripped bare.