Many of the regiments were actually in movement when an unexpected difficulty forced the commander-in-chief to make a fresh disposition of the troops. The state of the Portuguese roads north of the Tagus was unknown; the native officers and the people declared that they were impracticable for artillery. The opinion of colonel Lopez, a military commissary, sent by the Spanish government to facilitate the march of the British, coincided with this information, and the reports of one of the most intelligent and enterprising of the officers of the quarter-master-general’s department, who were employed to examine the lines of route, corroborated the general opinion[16]. Junot, indeed, with infinite pains, had carried his guns along these roads, but his carriages had been broken, and the batteries rendered unserviceable by the operation. In this dilemma, sir John Moore reluctantly determined to send his artillery and cavalry by the south bank of the Tagus, to Talavera de la Reyna, from whence they might gain Naval Carneiro, the Escurial, the pass of the Guadarama mountains, Espiñar, Arevalo, and Salamanca. He would have marched the whole army by the same route, if this disagreeable intelligence respecting the northern roads had been obtained earlier; but when the arrangements were all made for the supplies to go to Almeida, and when most of the regiments were actually in movement towards that town, it was too late to alter their destination. This separation of the artillery violated a great military principle, which prescribes that the point of concentration for an army should be beyond the reach of the enemy. But it was a matter of apparent necessity, and, moreover, no danger was apprehended from the offensive operations of an adversary represented to be incapable of maintaining his own line of defence. Valladolid and Burgos were considered by the Spaniards as safe places for the English magazines, and sir John Moore shared so much of the universal confidence in the Spanish enthusiasm and courage, as to suppose that Salamanca would not be an insecure point of concentration for his columns, under the protection of such numerous patriotic armies as were said to be on the Ebro. One brigade of six-pounders he retained with the head-quarters, the remainder of his artillery, twenty-four pieces; the cavalry, amounting to a thousand troopers; the great parc of the army, containing many hundred carriages, and escorted by three thousand infantry, he sent by the road of Talavera, under the command of sir John Hope, an officer qualified by his talents, firmness, and zeal, to conduct the most important enterprises.