After all, the practical results of the efforts made by the Portuguese government were invaluable. Wellington could not have held his ground, much less have undertaken the offensive campaign of 1812, without the aid of the trusty auxiliaries that swelled his divisions to normal size. Without their Portuguese brigades most of them would have been mere skeletons of 3,000 or 4,000 men. Beresford’s army was almost up to its full establishment in January 1812--there were 59,122 men on the rolls, when recruits, sick, men on detachment, and the regiment lent for the succour of Cadiz are all counted. Deducting, beyond these, the garrisons of Elvas, Abrantes, Almeida, and smaller places, as also the dismounted cavalry left in the rear[152], there were over 30,000 men for the fighting-line, in ten brigades of infantry, six regiments of cavalry, and eight field-batteries. Beresford, lately entrusted by orders from Rio Janeiro with still more stringent powers over the military establishment, was using them to the full. An iron hand kept down desertion and marauding, executions for each of those offences appear incessantly in the _Ordens do Dia_, which give the daily chronicle of the Portuguese head-quarters. In addition to the regular army it must be remembered that he had to manage the militia, of which as many as 52,000 men were under arms at one time or another in 1812. Counting the first and the second line together, there were 110,000 men enrolled--a fine total for a people of two and a half million souls. [152] The deductions were--sick, 7,500; untrained recruits, 4,000; dismounted cavalry, 3,000; regiment at Cadiz, 1,500; garrisons (infantry and artillery) and men on detachment, 10,000; leaving some 33,000 for the field. By May the gross total had gone down to 56,674.