Soult’s energy had been great, his sagacity was now as conspicuous. The slackness of pursuit, after passing Vallonga, made him judge Sir Arthur was pushing for Braga and would reach it first; a fighting retreat and the loss of guns and baggage would then ensue, and perhaps fatally depress the soldiers’ spirit; it would also favour the malcontents, and already one general, apparently Loison, was urging a convention. Soult replied by destroying the guns, ammunition, and baggage of the divisions he found at Guimaraens, and again taking to the mountains crossed them to Carvalho d’Este, thus gaining a day’s march and baffling the combination to surround him. Next morning he drew up his twenty thousand men on the position they had occupied two months before at the battle of Braga, an imposing spectacle, and on the scene of a recent victory, by which he aroused the sinking pride of the French soldier. It was a happy reach of generalship! Now he reorganized his army, giving Loison the advanced guard and taking the rear himself; at which, says the French historian of this expedition, “the whole army was astonished.” As if it were not consummate policy to oppose the British pursuit with men under the General-in-Chief, while the van, having to fight insurgents, was led by an officer whose very name called forth execrations from the natives--_Maneta, the one-handed_, as Loison was called, however willing, dared not surrender to a Portuguese force. From Carvalho the French made for Salamonde, whence there were two lines of retreat; the one by Ruivaens to Chaves, the other, shorter and more rugged, by the Ponte Nova to Montelegre. The scouts said the bridge at Ruivaens was broken, the passage defended by twelve hundred insurgents with artillery; moreover, that men had been all the morning working to destroy the Ponte Nova. The breaking of the first blocked the road to Chaves, the breaking of the second would, if completed, cut the army off from Montelegre. Night was setting in, the soldiers were harassed, barefooted, and starving, the ammunition was injured by rain, which had never ceased since the 13th, and was now accompanied by storms of wind, with the morning the British army would be on the rear, and if the Ponte Nova could not be secured the hour of surrender was come! In this extremity, Major Dulong, justly reputed as one of the most daring men in the French ranks, was thus addressed by Soult: “_I have chosen you from the whole army to seize the Ponte Nova, which has been cut by the enemy. Take a hundred grenadiers and twenty-five horsemen, surprise the guards and secure the passage. If you succeed, say so, but send no other report; your silence will suffice._”