7º. If it proved unfavourable to the French, the ulterior object of renewing the campaign on the frontier was in no manner compromised. The number of large boats that Lisbon can always furnish, would have sufficed to transport the beaten army over the Tagus from Santarem in a few hours, especially if the stores had been embarked before Junot moved towards Batalha, and the French army, once in the Alemtejo with a good garrison in Abrantes, could not have been followed until the forts at the mouth of the Tagus were reduced, and the fleet sheltered in the river. Thus, long before the British could have appeared in force in the Alemtejo, the fortress of Elvas would have been provisioned from the magazines collected by Loison after the battle of Evora, and the campaign could have been easily prolonged until the great French army, coming from Germany crushed all opposition. The above is not a theory broached after the event. That Junot would attempt something of the kind, was the data upon which the English general formed his plans; the intercepted memoir of colonel Bory de St. Vincent, treated such an operation as a matter of course, and Junot’s threats during the negotiation prove that he was not ignorant of his own resources; but his mind was depressed, and his desponding mood was palpable to those around him. It is a curious fact, that Sattaro, the Portuguese agent, who, for some purpose or other was in the British camp, told sir Arthur Wellesley before the battle of Vimiero, that Junot would willingly evacuate Portugal upon terms. [Sidenote: Thiebault.] 8º. When the French, being fourteen thousand in number, occupied Torres Vedras, that position was nearly impregnable. Seventeen thousand British could scarcely have carried it by force; but they might have turned it in a single march by the coast road; yet Junot neither placed a detachment on that side nor kept a vigilant watch by his patroles. Now, if sir Arthur Wellesley’s intended movement had not been arrested by orders from Burrard, it must have succeeded, because Junot was entangled in the defiles of Torres Vedras from six o’clock in the evening of the 20th, until late in the morning of the 21st. The two armies would thus have changed camps in the space of a few hours without firing a shot: Junot would have lost Lisbon, and have been placed in the most ridiculous situation.