The 20th a regiment being sent across the Minho, by the ferries of Barbantes and Ribidavia, defeated the insurgents of the left bank, advanced to the Arroyo river, and took post on the heights of Merea. The army, with the exception of the division guarding the guns, was the same day concentrated at Orense. But the utmost efforts of the artillery-officers had been baffled by the difficulties of the road between Tuy and Ribidavia; and this circumstance, together with the precarious state of the communications, the daily increasing sick-list, and the number of petty detachments necessary to protect the rear of the army, seemed to render the immediate invasion of Portugal hopeless. To men of an ordinary stamp it would have been so; but the duke of Dalmatia, with a ready boldness, resolved to throw the greatest part of his artillery and the whole of his other incumbrances into Tuy, as a place of arms, and then relinquishing all communication with Gallicia, for the moment, to march in one mass directly upon Oporto; from whence, if successful, he proposed to re-open his communication with Tuy, by the line of the coast, and then, recovering his artillery and parcs, to re-establish a regular system of operations. [Sidenote: S. Journal of Operations MSS.] In pursuance of this resolution, sixteen of the lightest guns and six howitzers, together with a proportion of ammunition-waggons, were, with infinite labour and difficulty, transported to Ribidavia, but the remaining thirty-six pieces and a vast parc of carriages, carrying ammunition and hospital and commissariat stores, were put into Tuy. General La Martiniere was left there with an establishment of artillery and engineer officers, a garrison of five hundred men fit to carry arms, and nine hundred sick. All the stragglers, convalescents, and detachments, coming from St. Jago, and the military chest, which was still in the rear, guarded by six hundred infantry, were directed upon Tuy, and the gates being then shut, La Martiniere was abandoned to his own resources. The men in hospital at Ribidavia were now forwarded to Orense, and the marshal’s quarters were established at the latter town on the 24th; but many obstacles were yet to be vanquished before the army could commence the march into Portugal. The gun-carriages had been so shaken in the transit from Tuy to Ribidavia that three days were required to repair them. It was extremely difficult to obtain provisions, and numerous bands of the peasants were still in arms; nor were they quelled until combats had taken place at Gurzo, on the Monte Blanco, in the Val d’Ornes, and up the valley of Avia, by which the French wasted time, lost men, and expended ammunition that could not be replaced. [Sidenote: Appendix, No. 13.]