All the cavalry with the army--a single squadron under Col. Taylor--was placed at the egress from the plain, on the direct road to Torres Vedras; but from the counter hills, facing the position, another road, running from Torres Vedras to Lourinham, led at the distance of two miles round the left, and by it an enemy could gain the ridge where the picquets were posted, seize the artillery and commissariat stores in the plain, and take the central hill and right-hand mountain in reverse. In the night of the 20th a German officer of cavalry aroused Sir Arthur Wellesley, saying the French army, twenty thousand strong, was within an hour’s march. Incredulous of this tale, the bearer of which was in evident consternation, he merely took some additional precautions; and at sunrise all eyes were turned southward, seeking an enemy who was not to be seen. Nevertheless the German’s report was only an exaggeration.[1] Junot had been in march all night with fourteen, not twenty, thousand men, designing to fall on at daybreak; but the rugged ways had retarded his progress, and his vanguard of cavalry did not crown the hills facing the English position before eight o’clock--the dust of its march having been discovered an hour before. Had he arrived by daybreak this dust could not have been observed, and an hour of preparation would have been lost to the English general, which, with a good plan of battle, would have enabled the French to gain the left-hand ridge, by the Lourinham road, before the troops on the right could cross to occupy that part of the position. Junot employed little time to note his adversary’s ground and dispositions, and entirely neglected the mountain on the English right, as being refused to his line of march; but as the left-hand ridge appeared naked of troops, he resolved to seize it by a detachment, and take the English central hill in reverse while he attacked it in front with his main body, thinking he should find the bulk of the army there. In this view he directed General Brennier with a brigade across the ravine covering the ridge, and Laborde with another against the central hill, supporting the latter with Loison’s division, a reserve of grenadiers under Kellermann, and the cavalry, thirteen hundred strong, under Margaron. To act on conjecture is dangerous in war. Junot conjectured falsely, and his entire disregard of the English right was a great error; for when his cavalry crowned the counter hills, Sir A. Wellesley, seeing the movements did not menace that part of his position, retained there one brigade under General Hill to serve as a support to the centre, while four other brigades were sent across the plain to occupy the left-hand ridge, and a fifth, reinforced with Trant’s Portuguese, moved to a parallel ridge in rear, where they could watch the Lourinham road.