The invading army, in pursuance of the convention of Fontainebleau, was divided into three corps; the central one, composed of the French troops, and a Spanish division, under general Caraffa, had penetrated by the two roads, which from Alcantara lead, the one by Pedragoa, the other by Sobreira Formosa; but at Abrantes, Caraffa’s division separated from the French, and took possession of Thomar. Meanwhile the right, under general Taranco, marching from Gallicia established themselves at Oporto, and the marquis of Solano, with the left, entered the Alemtejo, and fixed his quarters at Setuval. The Spanish troops did not suffer on their route; but such had been the distress of the French army, that three weeks afterwards it could only muster ten thousand men under arms, and the privations encountered on the march led to excesses which first produced that rancorous spirit of mutual hatred, so remarkable between the French and Portuguese. Young soldiers always attribute their sufferings to the ill-will of the inhabitants; it is difficult to make them understand that a poor peasantry have nothing to spare; old soldiers, on the contrary, blame nobody, but know how to extract subsistence in most cases without exciting enmity. Junot passed the month of December in collecting his army, securing the great military points about Lisbon, and in preparations to supplant the power of a council of regency, to whom the prince at his departure had delegated the sovereign authority. As long as the French troops were scattered on the line of march, and that the fortresses were held by Portuguese garrisons, it would have been dangerous to provoke the enmity, or to excite the activity of this council, and the members were treated with studious respect; but they were of the same leaven as the court they emanated from, and the quick resolute proceedings of Junot soon deprived them of any importance conferred by the critical situation of affairs during the first three weeks. [Sidenote: Return of the French army. Appendix, No. 28.] The Spanish auxiliary forces were well received in the north and in the Alemtejo; but general Taranco dying soon after his arrival at Oporto, the French general Quesnel was sent to command that province. Junot had early taken possession of Elvas, and detached general Maurin to the Algarves, with sixteen hundred men; and, when Solano was ordered by his court to withdraw from Portugal, nine French battalions and the cavalry, under the command of Kellerman, took possession of the Alemtejo also, and occupied the fortress of Setuval. At the same time Junot replaced Caraffa’s division at Thomar by a French force, and distributed the former in small bodies, at a considerable distance from each other, on both sides of the Tagus, immediately round Lisbon. [Sidenote: Foy.]