Massena expected to find great resources in Coimbra, a large and flourishing city situated in the finest part of a beautiful and fertile country. He found it utterly deserted, like every place which the French had hitherto entered on their march. With the intent of securing the stores, he forbade all pillage, and gave orders that only the brigade which was to be left in garrison there should enter. In defiance of these orders Junot commanded his men to make their way in, and break open the houses, as the owners had thought proper to abandon them. Such directions were eagerly obeyed; the men forced the guard, which, in pursuance of Massena’s instructions, had been stationed at the gate of S. Sophia; the other troops immediately joined them in their occupation, and Massena neither attempted to enforce his own orders, nor manifested any displeasure during the scene of wanton waste and havoc which ensued. The magazines of the allied army had been removed, and Montbrun, who was dispatched to Figueira for the chance of overtaking them there, arrived too late: but provision enough, it is said, was found in Coimbra to have served the enemy for a month’s consumption, if proper measures had been adopted for its preservation. The people who so unanimously forsook their homes had had neither time nor means for removing their property. So long as it was uncertain in which direction the invaders would move, and while a possibility remained that they might be successfully resisted upon the way, the people of Coimbra had lived in hope that this dire necessity might be averted; and when it came upon them, so many cars were required for the sick and wounded, and other services of the enemy, that few or none were left for them. ♦THE PORTUGUEZE PEOPLE FLY BEFORE THE ENEMY.♦